Cryptocurrency custody company Taurus has been granted a MiFID II investment license in Cyprus under regulation by the Mediterranean island’s regulator, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC).
The license allows Taurus to offer MiFID-regulated investment services for tokenized financial instruments to banks and asset managers in the European Union (EU), as well as secondary trading of tokenized bonds, fund shares, stocks and structured products, according to a press release published on Wednesday.
“Banks like to be faced with fully regulated entities, similar to those they worked with before,” Sébastien Dessimoz, co-founder and managing partner of Taurus, said in an interview.
“All brokers in Europe are MiFID approved firms, and Taurus is also a broker and now a MiFID approved firm. So these banks and institutions can be sure that we are subject to all the necessary guarantees – on top of that we have a presence in Europe, which is also very appreciated,” he added.
MiFID II (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II) is the European Union’s primary regulatory framework for investment services, trading platforms and financial assets such as stocks, bonds, derivatives and structured products. It is designed for traditional capital markets, meaning that a MiFID license effectively allows firms to operate as regulated investment service providers across the EU.
The license will therefore help Taurus connect its crypto-native infrastructure with the regulatory perimeter used by banks and asset managers, allowing it to offer tokenized securities to institutional clients in their preferred format.
Taurus already works on cryptocurrency custody and tokenization with companies such as Deutsche Bank, ClearBank, KBC, Santander, State Street, CACEIS, Pictet and Swissquote. The company also has a license from Swiss regulator FINMA, and a European Crypto Asset Markets Application (MiCA) is also in the works, Dessimoz said.
As a fully regulated entity incorporated in Europe, Taurus can offer classic investment services for securities, Dessimoz said, and also give clients the ability to buy or sell distributed ledger technology (DLT) financial instruments such as tokenized shares, tokenized debt, tokenized fund shares; in other words, crypto-assets qualifying as MiFID financial instruments.
Several other companies, such as OKX, Gemini, Crypto.com, Kraken, Bitstamp and Perpetuals.com, hold MiFID II licenses.
