GMEX acquires crypto custody platform Pyctor from ING

Rick Steves

“With this acquisition, GMEX Group consolidates its position as the first platform to offer an end-to-end multi-asset, multi-sector Hybrid Finance (HyFi) solution.”

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Dutch bank ING has spun out Pyctor, a startup providing digital post-trade market infrastructure, to GMEX Group, to strengthen its MultiHub platform, integrating traditional and decentralized finance.

ING hosted Pyctor in its ING Neo’s Amsterdam innovation lab, in collaboration with major financial institutions and regulators.

Pyctor, now a solution within GMEX, offers a regulatory-compliant digital assets network and custody technology for firms in need of digital custody and transactional network services for a broad range of digital assets. Pyctor also delivers interoperability between permissioned and public blockchains.

GMEX, will be able to combine Pyctor’s digital assets post-trade market infrastructure for global custodians, institutional issuers and other capital market actors with GMEX’s MultiHub in order to empower market participants to securely issue, access, manage, store and transact digital assets in a regulatory compliant manner alongside their traditional assets.

GMEX CEO Hirander Misra appointed Chairman of Pyctor

As a result of the acquisition, GMEX chief executive Hirander Misra has been appointed Chairman of Pyctor as the firm prepares further senior hirings.

Olivier Guillaumond, Global head of innovation Labs & Fintechs, ING commented: “After spinning out Stemly last year from ING Labs Singapore, Pyctor has been another innovation success story at ING Neo. ING Labs incubated Pyctor leveraging ING’s DLT expertise, deep digital assets knowledge and continuous feedbacks from regulators and network participants. We now have found the right partner in GMEX to scale Pyctor to the next stage. It brings the ideal connectivity between multiple trading parties and digital assets custodians, while addressing interoperability issues experienced in the market.”

Hirander Misra, CEO of GMEX Group said: “Pyctor’s decentralized network of institutional participants and Multi-Party Computation (MPC) proprietary custody technology offering compliments and strengthens the breadth of GMEX’s MultiHub ‘global network of networks’ as part of our strategic ethos of stimulating growth in the digital assets market.

“With this acquisition, GMEX Group consolidates its position as the first platform to offer an end-to-end multi-asset, multi-sector Hybrid Finance (HyFi) solution that bridges the gap between off-chain Traditional Finance (TradFi) and on-chain Decentralized Finance (DeFi) across jurisdictions.”

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