ES | Casos de uso cripto regulados en bancos, brokers e instituciones financieras |MERGE Madrid 2025

Hello, how did we end up in this place? It happened to us, yes, it happened to us. Well, first of all , thank you for sharing this space. We have to apologize because our colleague, Martín, had an emergency trip. We're going to try to replace this one.

My colleague Agustina Comeli is the one who handles the relationships between our clients, the banks, and the brokers. That's how it is. That's why we're here at the Merch. Elum. Yes.

And I'm in charge of the product. So, the presentation was designed to continue the regulatory discussion that the previous panelists had been having. Well, we're going to go all the way, let's say. I think it would be more productive for you if we shared a real-world experience of how our clients, banks, wallets, and brokers integrate into our service, and what the biggest problems are when implementing a crypto solution. So, the presentation will go all the way to the end, and with this, we'll talk a little bit about the steps our clients take when integrating into our service, right?

Uh, and perhaps before talking about those steps it's good to differentiate between two large groups of customer types. Types of clients: traditional banking, brokers with several years in the market, large structures, and other clients who are more tech-savvy, you see? a wallet, a neobank, this is a bank that is changing the structure of the traditional branch to provide digital services. In those two profiles, the path is always the same. The thing is, we see that in larger structures, if the vertical aspect of the product is in the hands of the person implementing it, that's much more agile internally.

Now, when the product distribution is horizontal, other departments such as compliance, legal, finance, and risk begin to appear and interfere a little with the more organic flow of implementation , right? Well, yes, legal risks, birthdays, I put them all in the same bag. That's not bad, let's say, our solution is regulated, it's a B2B solution. regulated crypto service. We have local regulation in Europe, in Listenstein, applying to MICA now at the end of the year.

Yes, but it's the compliance, risk, and legal departments that sometimes take the longest to learn what this is all about . Okay, going back to the steps, let's say, the first step is, let's say, what is the use case that the bank wants to solve? or the wallet, uh, to their clients, and that's quite difficult because sometimes they want a closed, turnkey, by-holes product, which is one of the ones we offer, but other times they have more to think about when defining what the use case to present is. Different needs in these local markets may require a different type of implementation. For example, Bolivia is currently going through a very particular situation, and the crypto product they use most is Stable Coins for international payments.

But when designing the solution, banks and our clients always think about the distribution channel: first the app, the home banking, how they're going to present the crypto product, and then they start to define it in more detail, right? In parallel with what we talked about with Agus, right? What's happening is the definition, if you will, of a slightly contractual nature of processes, controls, and compliance risk. This goes in parallel not only to the definition of the product, but also to the third step, which is the integration itself. When the product owner is the product area of ​​the technology bank itself , the integration is just another formality; let's say, in three weeks the clients are already integrated, and they start doing small tests in production.

When the structures are a little larger, this one takes time, but not as long as the other one, the previous step which is the definition of agreements. So they are rails that run parallel to each other. These are the three fundamental steps to reach production, which take between three and six months depending on the client's return on investment. Once in production, yes, then we have workshops and education, if desired, crypto for the client, follow-up to see when they implement new products within our portfolio. And that's a little bit of what we wanted to talk about today, to see if you're interested in implementing something from this talk .

The ownership they give to the area of ​​their company that is trying to provide a crypto service to their customers is fundamental. We can talk a little bit about our API solution, right? Yes, yes. Uh, they're simple systems, but we've arrived here after 12 years of work, right?, in the industry, and generating documentation and APIs that are easy to integrate, let's say, that's more our area, right?

Fuya. The product is basically that, it's an API, let's say any client connects from a technological point of view and thanks to that technological integration, they have a complete solution, it's a regulated solution, it's an operational solution for custody, liquidity and technology. Well, that's it, short talk. Any questions? Yes, well, we can talk here.

We have several ones already scheduled and some back and forth of Yes, they cross paths with us, they ask us what they need. Oh, thank you very much. Yes, yes. Did you have any questions there? We have two levels of custody, yes, two levels of custody.

Regulated custody and physical custody, let's say. Regarding physical storage, which I imagine is what you're asking about, we use providers like Bidgo and Firews. Depending on the client and depending on, for example, the type of custody our client wants, whether or not they want to participate in the custody, that is the infrastructure we use. Blockchain custody is the custody of the infrastructure of these providers, so to speak, right? Sure, but Fireblocks, for example, doesn't use multisex, they use shared keys that are signed by everyone and it's a single one.

You use Smartungo exactly the same thing. And what was the question? No, no, you don't use smart contracts at any point. Smart contracts only in tokenization-based projects. But not in the area of ​​custody, let's say, okay?

And we gradually added the tokenization feature . Request from our customers. Once you are connected to the API, the API gives you access to new products, tokenization, protocols for new coins or tokens that you want to list. Maybe later we can talk about the Smart Contra custody system you were asking about. Also, imagine our clients are institutional, right?

So I say, I think that little by little it will expand, I mean, having this conference for more and more years. We're seeing how more institutions are getting involved in this world, and even how we dress and the regulations are changing, right? That's what matters. Uh, crypto, as we always say, there may be two great solutions that complement each other. I think one is self- custody, which originated, let's say, the creation, and the other is the regulated environment, which I think is where you reach the largest number of people who start using, for example, the first steps, right?

Having a regulator controlling how a crypto product is made, how it reaches the customer, is fundamental. Well, thank you very much. One more question. Well, hello sunshine boys. And when they talk about institutions, what kind of institutions can they double-click on?

I mean, banks, obviously, but I do n't know, family offices, uh, I mean, you guys, well, I'll let you talk, but basically to understand why we are, well, at Rootstock we are looking to expand in that market and all that infrastructure is of interest to us, so I'm listening. Good question. Yes, our clients are institutions of all kinds, traditional banks, like the case of Galicia, which was the first to revolutionize the environment a bit , then the central bank came out to prohibit its operations and we are back with the CNB trying to revive that. Then you have the typical neobanks or wallets that want to offer crypto separately. Exactly.

Cocos Capital is one of our clients. This one, and Cocos has its OTC part, right? And that's where your question about Family Office came from. Or, yes, we also have a couple of investment funds or Family Offices. Uh, one of our products is a web interface that gives you access to the same functionality as the API, so you don't have to invest in the technological implementation to start testing our product.

Many family offices use that dashboard to manually manage their client portfolio. This, and lastly, Neobanks, also Neobanks at a regional level, which are neither traditional banks nor wallets, but something in between, are also using us. No, let's say, I didn't want to sell, I didn't want to come and sell Lirum, but we talked later. But basically, we don't charge you for integration, custody, or maintenance. Uh, we don't charge per API hit either.

This, our price is included in the wholesale price that we give through the API. One of the licenses we have here at Listenstein, in Europe, is that of price provider. And that's how we position ourselves as marketers and test wholesale prices by sweeping the order books of several regulated exchanges at the same level as ours, let's say , our business is based on volume, right? So it's like the price we give is wholesale because we're connected to all the exchanges, and then each client adds a markup depending on the market, right? Because, I mean, a country might have more competition, so they don't want to offer a much larger spread, and maybe in a country where there's no competition you can mark it up, but that's up to each client to decide how much more they want to charge than the price we give them, which is good because otherwise, imagine we wouldn't have any clients, but it would be like a spread and volume price, right?

Experience in earning services for exchanges as well. One of them is what I was telling you before, the API is the excuse to give you access to crypto primitives. Once you 're connected to the API, we'll keep downloading new products for you. One is staking and the other is lending. We have two DeFi protocols and we are adding more as clients request them, in order to provide some kind of return on custody.

Well, a real treat. We're crossing this way , okay?