In 2025 Europe’s banks stopped experimenting with crypto and started offering it. The EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) gave them a regulatory framework they could build on, and they went looking for a partner. Most of them chose Crypto Finance. The Deutsche Börse-owned firm won more than 60% of the EU requests for proposal and requests for information it competed for during 2025, with more than 75% of these on the trading side. By year-end it was serving more than 130 financial institutions across Switzerland and the EU, including more than 40 banks ranging from private banks and cantonal banks to large international banking groups, and had traded $4.8 billion in 2025.
That success rests on a deliberate regulatory strategy. In January 2025, Crypto Finance became one of the first digital asset providers to secure a MiCA licence. Germany’s financial regulator, BaFin, granted it to the firm’s German subsidiary, allowing it to passport custody and trading across the EU. The licence built on a Swiss securities dealer licence obtained in 2021 and German crypto trading and custody licences granted in 2024. The firm could have taken an easier path through a lighter-touch jurisdiction. It chose not to.
“We decided to go the heavily regulated path, with BaFin in Germany and FINMA in Switzerland, and not regulatory arbitrage,” says chief commercial officer Mike Schwitalla. Banks have rewarded that choice. Under MiCA, only the custodian strictly needs to be MiCA-regulated, but many banks now insist on a fully regulated counterparty for trading too, because they want the bankruptcy remoteness and enforceability that a credible EU regulator provides.
Three years ago, initiatives were driven by innovation and R&D teams. Now they are driven by the business. You see commitment and you see budget
Mike Schwitalla
The firm’s second advantage is structural. Crypto Finance is B2B only. It has no retail clients and no natural persons on its books, so it never competes with the banks it serves for their own customers. Private banks in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, which have been among its strongest sources of growth, value that neutrality highly. “We operate in a highly regulated environment, very much aligned with banking-grade standards, while remaining a neutral infrastructure provider rather than a competitor to banks,” says Schwitalla.
Custody operating models range from fully outsourced solutions to hybrid and fully insourced setups, allowing clients to select the level of control, operational involvement, and infrastructure ownership that best fits their business and regulatory requirements. Institutional connectivity supports FIX for real-time market data, order management and execution, with drop-copy functionality. REST APIs are available for integration and are widely used by clients for reconciliation, reporting and post-trade operations. Delivery-versus-payment and T+1 settlement are supported via user interface, API or Swift connectivity, enabling seamless integration with existing bank back-office processes, reconciliation workflows, and operational controls. The result is that a bank can manage digital assets with the same controls it applies to traditional instruments.
Execution is built for institutional size. Crypto Finance aggregates liquidity from more than 15 exchanges, OTC desks and market makers through smart order routing, with block trading and request-for-quote workflows for large orders. It supports about 100 assets and more than 400 trading pairs. Streaming pricing and principal execution in liquid trading pairs is supported by Crypto Finance’s own balance sheet and settlement infrastructure, with risk hedged through delta-one instruments. An agency execution model is used for less-liquid digital assets. Delta-one and European options for clients’ treasury needs were offered out of Switzerland as a proof-of-concept in 2025.
Security and custody meet the standard banks expect. Private keys are generated and held exclusively in FIPS 140-2 Level 3-certified hardware security modules, deployed geo-redundantly in Switzerland and Germany. These are the same class of hardware used in the Swiss Interbank Clearing system, which handles an average of CHF 226 billion ($269 billion) in daily turnover, designed to be post-quantum ready. Client assets are fully segregated and bankruptcy-remote. On-chain analytics, wallet verification and Travel Rule compliance are built into standard workflows, and the firm publishes annual SOC 1 Type I and SOC 2 Type II reports.
Crypto Finance has also kept investing in people. Its workforce reached an all-time high in 2025, and banks see the same account managers regularly in monthly reviews covering pricing, project delivery and regulatory interpretation. That support matters because client priorities are shifting.
“Three years ago, initiatives were driven by innovation and R&D teams,” says Schwitalla. “Now they are driven by the business. You see commitment and you see budget.”
Clients are now taking the firm into new markets. In LATAM, a Spanish bank client is leading its expansion into Brazil using the blueprint developed in Europe, and private banks are driving early work on crypto derivatives.
The world’s best digital assets broker should be the partner regulated institutions trust to bring them into the market. In 2025, more European banks put their trust in Crypto Finance than in almost any other provider. Its regulatory standards, institutional-grade infrastructure and refusal to compete with its own clients turned the arrival of MiCA into decisive commercial leadership.
