intas.tech

intas.tech groups its consulting into four fields that follow the EU and German rules for digital assets. For the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR), the team analyzes which requirements apply to the services of a client and then implements them. In crypto custody, intas.tech helps an institution decide how it holds the private keys of its clients, from building the function in-house to working with a licensed custodian.

The third field covers crypto fund units, the tokenized fund shares that German law permits for investment funds, which intas.tech regards as regulation that drives innovation in the fund industry. The fourth field is the DLT Pilot Regime of the EU, under which market infrastructures can trade and settle tokenized securities on distributed ledgers with temporary exemptions.

intas.tech works with its clients in three levels, and the first level builds knowledge inside the organization. Its DLT trainings follow a modular program that the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center developed. The modules run from the functional and technical basics of distributed ledgers through Bitcoin, Ethereum and the custody of digital assets to use cases for the business of the client.

The second level is a digital asset strategy that looks at asset classes, processes and the value chain together. For crypto custody, for example, intas.tech compares providers on security certifications such as SOC 2 and ISO, on insurance cover, on the type of storage from cold wallets to multi-party computation and on the assets they support.

At the third level, intas.tech implements the use case and helps the client choose a ledger, comparing frameworks such as R3 Corda, Hyperledger and Ethereum networks like Quorum. The comparison includes cost models per transaction and per user as well as the monthly operating costs of each option.

intas.tech documents six of its client projects without naming the clients involved. In one of them, a firm with a commission business in crypto-assets had intas.tech assess the impact of MiCAR, close procedural, technical and contractual gaps and organize its reporting to the competent authority. Another client wanted to know whether it could take on the regulated roles of crypto custodian, crypto securities registrar and central register under German law. intas.tech developed a target operating model for fund tokenization for this client and drafted the license application for the registry.

Together with a further client, intas.tech set up a tokenization platform for investment fund units with a register on a distributed ledger that meets the requirements of the eWpG, KryptoFAV and eWpRV. The project chose Hyperledger Fabric and Hyperledger Besu, so that the platform can run on a permissioned ledger as well as on public blockchain infrastructure.

The remaining projects covered a target operating model and the selection of a crypto custody provider, an impact analysis of electronic and crypto fund units on subscription and redemption, and the integration of crypto-assets into investment funds. That last project included a cost analysis, feasibility criteria and the data connection to crypto trading platforms.

intas.tech publishes research together with partners from academia and the financial industry. Professor Co-Pierre Georg of Frankfurt School and Benjamin Schaub, managing partner of intas.tech, led a study on the total cost of crypto trading for retail investors. The study ran 432 round trips through the apps of nine providers regulated under MiCAR, and the average total cost ranged from 0.53 percent to 6.45 percent, depending on the provider.

intas.tech also publishes the Deka Digital Asset Monitor twice a year, a market overview of crypto securities issued under the German Electronic Securities Act (eWpG). The monitor counts issues and their volume and ranks the crypto securities registrars that keep them. The crypto trading tests of intas.tech for Germany compare providers through standardized test purchases and the trading costs that were actually charged.

The IT service provider adesso and intas.tech announced a partnership in July 2021 to advise on digital assets and implement them together. intas.tech contributes its capital market and blockchain expertise to the partnership, and adesso adds its experience with IT projects. The joint offer addresses securities trading banks and other financial service providers.

intas.tech GmbH is entered in the commercial register in Frankfurt am Main under HRB 123457. Benjamin Schaub leads the company as managing partner, and Ulrich Rogmans is its managing director. The office of intas.tech is at Westendstraße 28, 60325 Frankfurt am Main. Inquiries reach the firm by phone at +49 69 87009700 or by email at info@intas.tech