Germany's Largest State Bank LBBW To Offer Cryptocurrency Custody Services

According to PANews, Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW), Germany's largest state bank, plans to collaborate with Bitpanda exchange to start offering cryptocurrency custody services. The announcement was made by both companies on Monday, stating that LBBW and Bitpanda will begin providing cryptocurrency asset custody services to institutional and corporate clients from the second half of 2024. Jürgen Harengel, the Managing Director of Corporate Banking at LBBW, stated, 'The demand for digital assets from our corporate clients is increasing day by day.' German banks and asset management companies are becoming increasingly active in the field of cryptocurrency assets, offering custody services and developing their own products for this asset class in response to EU regulations that will come into effect later this year. Deutsche Bank is developing its own digital asset custody service, and its DWS division is one of the consortium members developing a Euro-denominated stablecoin. LBBW, owned by several German savings banks, the state of Baden-Württemberg, and the city of Stuttgart, has assets of approximately 330 billion Euros (equivalent to 355 billion US dollars).