Digital asset custodian

To move crypto you need a secret “key” (the private key). If you lose it, you lose your coins forever; if it is stolen, they are taken from you. Keeping it safe is complicated and nerve-racking. A digital asset custodian is like a bank's safe, but for those keys: a professional company that holds and protects them on your behalf.

That way, instead of keeping your keys on a piece of paper or on your phone, afraid of losing them, you entrust them to someone who specialises in security. It is especially useful for companies and large investors who handle many tokens and do not want to bear that risk on their own.

A digital asset custodian is the entity that provides the service of custody and administration of crypto-assets on behalf of clients, which in practice means safeguarding the cryptographic keys (in particular, the private keys) that allow those assets to be disposed of.

Where crypto-assets fall within the scope of MiCA, this service corresponds to the “custody and administration of crypto-assets on behalf of clients” regulated under the MiCA Regulation (EU) 2023/1114, reserved to authorised crypto-asset service providers, with obligations of asset segregation and liability. Where the tokenised asset is a financial instrument, custody is governed by the investment-services regime of MiFID II (Directive 2014/65/EU) and Ley 6/2023 (LMVSI). The choice of framework therefore depends on the legal nature of the asset held in custody.