Nomura’s Pres. Settles Rumors; Ledger Joint Venture on Crypto Custody Services Delayed

As you may have already heard, Ledger, the creator of the Ledger Wallets, has started a partnership with the Japan-based Nomura bank recently in order to start a custody service. However, it seems that the results of the partnership have been delayed for now and that the project will only be launched in 2020.

Pascal Gauthier, the president of Ledger, has talked to Coindesk and affirmed that the partnership was still happening, just that the results were delayed. The affirmed that all baseless rumors were not the truth and that Nomura had not ditched Ledger.

Gauthier affirmed that if Nomura decided to get out of the partnership, everybody would new and they would be having a “completely different conversation”.

Most of the rumors started as the partnership was first started last year and it does not have results to show so far.

The two companies, together with Global Advisors, an investment company, started to plan the regulated, compliant and secure platform for institutional investors to store their assets since then. The initiative will be called Komainu and will be a partnership of these three major companies.

According to Gauthier, custody is a complex issue, way more complicated than people seem to acknowledge, which is the delays happened. The launch was initially programmed for the first half of 2019, but undisclosed difficulties may take the launch of the project into 2020, delaying it over six months.

Custody Is More Than Just Keeping Assets

Some of our readers may be thinking “well, but how hard can it be to just guard someone’s assets?” Very hard, indeed, because that is only the easiest part of the whole process. Komainu will also deal with regulation, insurance and certification of the assets and all of these aspects need regulatory approval, as noted by Gauthier.

If the project is to be really transparent and compliant with all the local and global laws, it has to take its time. Take Bakkt, for instance, the platform created by the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). It was supposed to be launched already but it is lagging behind because it needs regulation from the U. S. CFTC.

Gauthier has reaffirmed how amazing the project is and said that the companies are still on track to create great products for their clients. To announce something that would not be a good experience simply goes against the beliefs of the company.

He also affirmed that, so far, it has been a “truly interesting experience” to bring all these companies together in order to create this new business solution. According to him, the team could “write a book” about the whole situation of creating such a huge product some day.