Bitbond

Welcome to the sixth Spotlight of our Ashurst FinTech Spotlight series. Over the coming weeks and months we will be covering FinTech companies that were part of our FinTech Legal Labs Cohort in November 2019 and other promising FinTech companies.

We are delighted to introduce Bitbond as a spotlighted company in this series. If you are interested in suggesting a company to be covered under this series, or are interested in meeting or finding out more about any of the companies we are featuring as part of this series please do not hesitate to contact us.

Bitbond - About the company

Bitbond is a Berlin-based fintech company specialised in providing tokenisation software and related services to banks, asset managers and other financial intermediaries. Founded in 2013, Bitbond has a seven year track record in leveraging blockchain technology to build innovative applications for the finance industry.

Bitbond has been an innovator since its early days, being the first blockchain company to receive a BaFin license in 2013 as well as the being the first German issuer of a security token with a securities prospectus approved by the regulator in 2019. Since placing its tokenised bond with more than 1,200 retail investors all over Europe, the fintech company has focused on building an end-to-end product suite for institutional as well as large-size corporate clients in Europe and beyond.

Bitbond’s SaaS products cover three focus areas: digital asset custody, asset tokenisation and on-chain payments. Custody software establishes the baseline for institutionals to safely and compliantly handle digital assets. Tokenisation software allows issuers to independently issue tokenized assets and thereby to cut numerous costly intermediaries out of the process. Finally, blockchain payment software helps to leverage the full power of tokenisation by applying fiat-backed stable coins to conduct asset-related payments.

Key advantages

Increase your investor access by tokenising your assets

• Many assets come with high investment barriers: high denominations, lacking liquidity and geographical fungibility weaken investor attractiveness.
• Tokenised assets can be fractionalised and instantly transferred globally, thereby solving many of the shortcomings of conventional assets.

Set up a security offering in a matter of days instead of weeks

• Many smaller issuers face challenges when preparing offerings as they lack direct accounts with central security depositories (CSDs) and others.
• Tokenisation creates independence: from CSDs, paying agents, trustees and other intermediaries that imply costs, complexity and processing time.

Achieve instant transaction settlement and eliminate counter party risk

• Traditional security trades and transactions can take multiple days up to several weeks to settle, especially when transferring assets across borders.
• Blockchain-based securities allow for instant delivery-vs-payment, speeding up transactions to real time globally, eliminating counterparty risk and related costs.