The Europe’s sixth-largest bank, is aiming to buy or take a strategic position in a cryptocurrency custodian.

According to the sources, the bank, known as SocGen, has also issued a request for proposal (RFP) in search of businesses that might offer safety for cryptocurrency as well as trading services.

The French bank may be lagging behind banks like BBVA, BNY Mellon, and Standard Chartered as banks turn to crypto custody as a means to enter the $2.5 trillion crypto market.

According to one source, SocGen is interested in two Swiss companies in particular: Metaco and Taurus. (Metaco offered crypto custody technology to BBVA and Gazprombank’s Swiss subsidiary.)

Curv bank

Interest in digital asset custody transactions has increased, owing in part to PayPal’s acquisition of multi-party computation (MPC) firm Curv, which CoinDesk first reported in March. As a result of the purchase, Curv’s current clients were given till the end of the year to locate another supplier.

“When PayPal purchased Curv, the impact was that they not only acquired the business, but they also removed it off the market,” a major player in the cryptocurrency custody industry told CoinDesk. “All of those consumers had to search for alternatives.”

SocGen, Europe’s sixth-largest bank, has prior expertise with cryptocurrency.

Earlier last month, the bank proposed accepting on-chain bond tokens as collateral for a DAI stablecoin loan in the governance forums of decentralized finance (DeFi) software MakerDAO.

FORGE, SocGen’s blockchain business, has also experimented with public blockchains in the past.

Patrick

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