Amid the growing demand for hybrid finance GMEX has acquired ING’s Pyctor business to connect CeFi and Defi. ING Group, Dutch multinational banking, and financial services corporation, has rolled out its digital asset business Pyctor to multi-asset trading infrastructure firm GMEX, the companies said in a joint announcement on Monday.
GMEX CEO Hirander Misra told Cointelegraph that the Pyctor donation compliments GMEX’s MultiHub service, and institutional cross-platform business launched last year with the assignment to bridge the gap between centralized finance (CeFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi),
Pyctor increases MultiHub with a number of digital asset-focused capabilities, including smart contract features, and post-trade custodial and institutional network capabilities like the destruction of private keys.
Pyctor is also designed to support regulatory acquiescence, including a major Anti-Money Laundering framework by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) which is referred to as the Travel rule.
Misra said, “there is a market need for this type of offering built by a bank for banks, asset managers, and corporate clients, which can now operate in a neutral environment for institutional participants.” Institutions are gradually seeking to expand their capabilities into digital assets trading and settlement in a way that is interoperable with existing CeFi systems and asset classes, the CEO added, while saying:
“This calls for the need for hybrid finance, or HyFi, which delivers a hybrid digital market infrastructure solution with interoperability of multiple blockchains and API integration into traditional systems to ensure a cohesive approach.”
ING started Pyctor as a project raised out of its innovation arm ING Labs in Amsterdam in 2018. Pyctor’s technology manages private keys by breaking and distributing them among blockchain nodes hosted by regulated institutions.
ING finished Pyctor’s first proof of concept in 2019 and then formed a working group for sandbox trials, including participation from major global banks and firms like BNP Paribas, Citi, ABN AMRO, and Societe Generale, Invesco, UBS, State Street, Forge and others.
As previously reported by Cointelegraph, ING has been working on proprietary cyptocurency custody technology tools since at least 2019 alongside many other blockchain-related activities. In 2021, ING arranged a trial of a DeFi peer-to-peer offering protocol with the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets.
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