July was an eventful month, with XRP causing a ‘Ripple Effect’ across the crypto industry. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Ripple scored a win in their three-year-long case with the SEC with the court ruling that XRP was not a security (when they sold it to the general public - not when they sold it to institutional investors). While this was a case specific to Ripple, it set a bullish precedent for other digital assets projects, which were worried that their tokens, too, could be deemed as securities.
As for us at Hex Trust, we’ve been continuing our expansion into Europe, a key market with the upcoming MiCA regulation. We just received regulatory approval to provide digital asset services in France and attended EthCC Paris, hosting and participating in multiple side events with our partners.
As always, we continue enhancing our product and service offerings by integrating the leading blockchains and projects. We launched ETH staking services following the Shapella upgrade, we were selected as the only licensed custodian in APAC & The Middle East to support Celestia’s mainnet launch, and the hottest token of the week, Worldcoin ($WLD), was integrated into our custody platform, Hex Safe.
We just obtained the Digital Asset Service Provider (DASP) registration granted by Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) and Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution (ACPR) in France.
Receiving the DASP registration fully enables Hex Trust to provide the following services, such as digital asset custody, the purchase/sale of digital assets for legal tender, and the trading of digital assets against other digital assets. The DASP registration is a critical step towards becoming licensed in the European Union (EU) under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA).
Over in Paris, the Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) brought together over 350 speakers and 5,000 attendees including our CEO and Co-Founder, Alessio Quaglini, our Managing Director of Europe, Paolo Gagliano, and our VP of Sales & BD, Luise Vad.
Hex Trust hosted and participated in events and panels along with our partners and friends Animoca Brands, The Sandbox, Life Beyond, LeadBlock Partners, Kiln, and Chorus One.
We recently launched ETH native staking services after the Shapella upgrade. Hex Trust has an Ethereum Validator Node and plays a vital role in securing the Ethereum network by storing data, verifying transactions, and adding new blocks to the blockchain.
There are many advantages of staking ETH via the Hex Trust Validator Nodes. Staking is highly secured via Hex Trust’s custody-grade level of protection for validator keys, while airgapped wallets are created on devices that aren’t connected to the internet. Client’s withdrawal wallets have institutional-grade protection via Hex Safe, ensuring rewards have industry-leading security. Additionally, Hex Trust prioritizes top-level availability and security with dedicated nodes to avoid potential penalties and risks, 24/7 node monitoring to ensure optimal functioning, consistent connectivity to the protocol, and reliable data access for all nodes.
Hex Trust will provide its institutional clients with custody services for Celestia’s token ($TIA) via Hex Safe. In addition, Hex Trust is also running a validator node on the Celestia network enabling clients access to staking services for $TIA. This allows staking rewards to be earned from day one of the TGE.
The Worldcoin protocol is intended to be the world’s largest identity and financial public network, open to everyone regardless of their country, background or economic status. If you’d like to custody $WLD with Hex Trust, please reach out at enquiries@hextrust.com.
Our Managing Director, Calvin Shen, broke down the evolving role of the digital asset custodian and the Custody 3.0 era. How have ever-changing market conditions and growing demand for institutional participation in the decentralized economy shaped custodians today?
Read his article
Our CEO & Co-Founder, Alessio Quaglini sat down with Chris Tran for VietSuccesses’ Web3+ latest episode to share the story behind the creation of Hex Trust and the challenges faced in Web3 compliance.
While the Ripple’s SEC case may be a ‘win’ for the industry, this is potentially just the beginning of a longer battle. The SEC is still going after major players Coinbase and Binance, with the stance that digital assets are securities and should be regulated as such.
Bitcoin still hovers around the 30k level, with hopes of a BlackRock spot Bitcoin ETF looming on the horizon. Will this be the catalyst for the bull market or trigger lower prices if denied?
What is for certain, though, is that the Ripple Effect impacted the market and planted seeds of hope again for the altcoin sector. However, only time will tell if the effect is just a ripple or a bigger wave.
