Cryptocurrency custody firm Taurus has been granted a MiFID II investment license in Cyprus under the regulatory ambit of Mediterranean island’s regulator, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC).
The license enables Taurus to offer MiFID-regulated investment services for tokenized financial instruments to banks and asset managers across the European Union (EU), as well as secondary trading for tokenized bonds, fund shares, equities, and structured products, according to a press release on Wednesday.
“Banks like to face fully regulated entities that are similar to the one they used to work with,” Sébastien Dessimoz, co-founder and Managing Partner at Taurus, said in an interview.
“All the brokers in Europe are MiFID licensed firms, and Taurus is a broker also and now a MiFID licensed firm. So those banks and institutions can be sure we are subject to all the necessary guarantees – on top of that we’re onshore in Europe, which is also highly appreciated,” he added.
MiFID II (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II) is the European Union’s core regulatory framework for investment services, trading venues, and financial assets such as equities, bonds, derivatives, and structured products. It is designed for traditional capital markets, meaning a MiFID license effectively allows firms to operate as regulated investment service providers across the EU.
The license, therefore, will help Taurus bridge 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 crypto custody and tokenization with the likes of Deutsche Bank, ClearBank, KBC, Santander, State Street, CACEIS, Pictet, and Swissquote. The firm also has a licence from Swiss regulator FINMA, and an EU Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) application is in the pipeline too, said Dessimoz.
As a fully regulated entity incorporated in Europe, Taurus can offer classical investment services for transferable securities, Dessimoz said, and also give clients the possibility to buy or sell distributed ledger technology (DLT) financial instruments such as tokenized equity, tokenized debt, tokenized fund shares; in other words, crypto-assets that qualify as MiFID financial instruments.
Several other firms, such as OKX, Gemini, Crypto.com, Kraken, Bitstamp, and Perpetuals.com, hold MiFID II licenses.