Boerse Stuttgart Digital

Boerse Stuttgart Group describes itself as the sixth largest exchange group in Europe. Boerse Stuttgart Group has two pillars, the capital markets business and the digital and crypto business, and holds 18 licenses in Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. The capital markets division runs the Stuttgart Stock Exchange, the Nordic Growth Market in Sweden, BX Swiss, the zero-fee venue TradeREBEL and the broker EUWAX AG.

Two more divisions do the onchain work. The digital division holds Boerse Stuttgart Digital, which trades and keeps crypto assets for banks and brokers, and the retail app BISON. The tokenized assets division holds Seturion, a settlement platform for tokenized securities, and SeturionX, a Swiss trading venue for tokenized assets. Harry Dörsam reported the group's latest annual figures in Die Privatbank (in German): trading volume on its venues grew by about 17 percent, crypto assets held in trust by Boerse Stuttgart Digital peaked at about 5.2 billion euros, and its platforms counted 1.2 million retail customers.

Boerse Stuttgart Digital provides modular services for crypto trading and custody to banks and brokers. A bank or broker picks the modules it needs: brokerage for bilateral over-the-counter trades, the exchange BSDEX, and custody. Boerse Stuttgart Digital reports more than 200 institutional clients, 70 tradable cryptocurrencies and more than 5 billion euros in assets in custody, and it names Munich Re as the insurer of the crypto assets it holds (Boerse Stuttgart Digital). The custody company of Boerse Stuttgart Digital, Boerse Stuttgart Digital Custody GmbH, was the first German provider to receive an EU-wide MiCAR license from BaFin, which lets it serve institutional clients in every EU member state.

Both large German banking groups use it. DZ BANK holds a MiCAR approval from BaFin for meinKrypto, a crypto wallet inside the VR Banking App of the Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken. meinKrypto started with bitcoin, ether, litecoin and cardano; Boerse Stuttgart Digital keeps the coins and EUWAX AG executes the orders. DekaBank first used Boerse Stuttgart Digital for its institutional clients and then extended the partnership to a retail offer for the savings banks that covers trading, custody and the front end, as Ledger Insights reported. That offer is meant for the roughly 50 million retail customers of the savings banks (Die Privatbank, in German).

KfW used Boerse Stuttgart Digital as custodian when it issued digital bonds under the German Electronic Securities Act during the ECB's trials of DLT settlement (Ledger Insights). Further clients named by the unit include Intesa Sanpaolo in Italy and the Slovenian broker Ilirika. Banks use crypto custody services to store and manage their crypto assets.

Boerse Stuttgart Digital and the crypto trading firm tradias closed their merger once the ownership control procedure was complete. The combined business unit keeps the name Boerse Stuttgart Digital, and tradias becomes its brand for trading. Boerse Stuttgart Digital has around 300 employees, headquarters in Frankfurt and Stuttgart, and offices in Athens, Berlin, Dubai, Madrid, Milan and Ljubljana. Dr. Ulli Spankowski from Boerse Stuttgart Digital and Christopher Beck, the founder of tradias, lead it as co-CEOs, and Michael Reinhard from tradias is the group's Chief Digital Assets Officer.

tradias brings clients such as flatexDEGIRO and dwpbank and says it lets more than 30 million Europeans trade crypto through their own bank. After the merger the unit covers trading, custody, staking and tokenization for financial institutions. Group CEO Dr. Matthias Voelkel explained the plan behind the deal to Sven Wagenknecht in a BTC-ECHO interview (in German), along with his view that the revision of the EU's DLT Pilot Regime has to pass quickly.

BSDEX, the Boerse Stuttgart Digital Exchange, is a regulated multilateral trading facility for crypto assets with an open order book, the trading model of a stock exchange. Institutions with a BaFin license trade on it, and private investors who live in Germany can open an account of their own. BISON is the group's crypto app for retail customers. BISON counts more than 1,050,000 users; EUWAX AG is the trading partner, and Boerse Stuttgart Digital Custody GmbH holds the coins in trust. BISON and BSDEX need separate accounts. The largest crypto exchanges in Germany page compares BSDEX with other licensed venues.

The tokenized assets division runs Seturion, a settlement platform for tokenized securities built for all of Europe, and SeturionX in Switzerland, formerly BX Digital, which holds the first FINMA license for a DLT trading facility. Seturion has settlement deals with the structured products venues of Boerse Stuttgart and Nasdaq Stockholm and has applied for a license under the EU's DLT Pilot Regime (Ledger Insights). Societe Generale, its crypto subsidiary SG-FORGE and the online broker flatexDEGIRO joined as partners.

The same bank relationship reached crypto trading: Boerse Stuttgart Digital integrated EUR CoinVertible, the MiCAR-compliant euro stablecoin of SG-FORGE, into its trading and custody services. EUR CoinVertible is the first euro stablecoin from a bank subsidiary on the platform. A test transaction with the same stablecoin had settled on Seturion before. Stablecoins in Europe covers the other euro issuers under MiCA.

The Frankfurt Forum on Digital Assets & Applications was organized by d-fine and held at the Literaturhaus Frankfurt. Seturion sat on its panel about DLT-based market infrastructures next to DekaBank, 360X and 21X, and DZ Bank was on the second panel about payments in DLT-based markets. Finance Loop partners with the Crypto Assets Conference in Frankfurt, hosted by Frankfurt School and Deutsche Börse Group for decision-makers in digital assets and capital markets. Upcoming dates for Germany are in the calendar above.

Boerse Stuttgart Digital Custody GmbH holds a MiCAR license from BaFin, the first a German crypto provider received, and can use it across the EU. BSDEX is a multilateral trading facility operated by Baden-Württembergische Wertpapierbörse GmbH. The group as a whole holds 18 licenses in Germany, Sweden and Switzerland.

Boerse Stuttgart Group owns Boerse Stuttgart Digital. Boerse Stuttgart Digital is a business unit of the group with its own co-CEOs. The group's Chief Digital Assets Officer sits on the Group Executive Committee and is responsible for the crypto and digital assets business.

DZ BANK uses the services for the meinKrypto wallet of the Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken, and DekaBank, for the crypto offer of the savings banks. The unit also names Intesa Sanpaolo, SG-FORGE, KfW and Ilirika as clients, and through tradias it serves flatexDEGIRO and dwpbank.