Fireblocks , today announced its intention to devote significant resources to expanding its presence and growth in the Germany market- Austria-Switzerland with the opening of a new office based in Switzerland. Over the past six months, Fireblocks has doubled the size of its European team to serve the growing number of institutional clients in the region, with nearly 200 clients in the Germany-Austria-Switzerland market.
To serve Fireblocks customers in the region, the company has appointed Richard Astle and Ana Santillan as co-directors for Switzerland.Richard brings in-depth knowledge of the Swiss financial services industry, gained from leading banks where he was involved in the launch of Swiss Crypto Vault and was a founding member of the Institutional Services and Products division of Bitcoin Switzerland.
Ana specializes in debt capital markets, having established the Institutional Fixed Income Services team at Morgan Stanley in Switzerland. She held executive positions in wealth management at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse before moving into digital assets. With over a decade of financial experience, Richard and Ana have advised hedge funds, banks and corporate clients on the trading and custody of digital assets.
“It is important for us to work with companies based in Switzerland because of the value they bring to the financial market, as they have established themselves as one of the world’s leading financial centers , ” said Michael Shaulov , CEO by Fireblocks.
“Today, these financial institutions are looking to rapidly deploy digital asset custody, trading and tokenization products and are turning to trusted technologies to help them stay at the forefront of this industry and operate securely the global crypto ecosystem. ”
After onboarding more than 500 financial institutions and developing its custody technology to manage $ 1 trillion in digital assets, Fireblocks is strengthening its investment and presence in Switzerland, one of the most diverse and growing financial centers. fastest in the world.
Further expansion in the Germany-Austria-Switzerland region is driven by increased demand from financial institutions around the world, who wish to move from traditional HSMs to an infrastructure using confidential computing based on MPC and SGX. Last year, the Fireblocks R&D team developed MPC-CMP, a revolutionary new MPC algorithm, launched as an open source contribution to the digital asset industry to boost asset security and transaction signing speed.
Today, Swiss national institutions were the first to use the MPC-CMP, thus remaining at the forefront of innovation and adoption of digital assets in Europe .
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“Fireblocks was the first solution to introduce cloud-based confidential computing and MPC technology into the digital asset space and we are pleased to see this approach being adopted by large financial institutions,” said Andy Flury , founder and CEO of AlgoTrader .
“With Fireblocks’ strong penetration into the Swiss market and seamless integration with our WIRESWARM solutions to deliver a unique end-to-end experience, from negotiation to custody to settlement, we look forward to our customers and all Financial institutions can access Fireblocks’ proven custody and settlement technology platform for their growing digital asset business. ”
As part of its efforts to support the growth of digital assets in Switzerland, Fireblocks recently became a member of The Crypto Valley Association, an independent, government-backed association founded to take full advantage of Switzerland’s strengths to build the world’s leading ecosystem of blockchain and cryptographic technologies with Bitcoin Suisse, Accenture, Ledger, Okex, PWC, Kraken among other leaders in the blockchain space.
“As a long-standing financial partner of Fireblocks, we are convinced that banks and institutions in the Swiss region are ready to integrate its solutions, as new products and services prepare to be marketed,” said Stefan Kuentz , investment partner at Swisscom Ventures . “Not only will Fireblocks allow Swiss-based banks and institutions to easily launch or grow their digital asset businesses, but the business will also serve as a direct channel to connect to the global digital asset and liquidity market. ”
Switzerland is important for the growth, development and adoption of digital assets because the country’s financial sector was one of the first to embrace cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance and has a comprehensive set of regulations for govern the sector. The region has over 960 blockchain / cryptocurrency companies, which include 11 unicorns and employ over 5,000 people. In February, Switzerland passed a tokenized securities law that allows the country to have one of the most advanced cryptocurrency jurisdictions in the world.
Fireblocks has grown to serve some of the world’s largest banks such as Siam Commercial Bank, SVB, and Bank of New York Mellon (BNY), as well as many institutions based in the EU region like Revolut, Algotrader, GSR Markets, Woorton, Enigma Securities and Scrypt Asset Management for the custody, transfer and issuance of digital assets.
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