Largest crypto custodians in Germany

Every company on this list appears in the interim MiCA register of the European Securities and Markets Authority with permission for the custody and administration of crypto-assets on behalf of clients. The register names 18 companies based in Germany with this permission. Neither BaFin nor ESMA publishes custody volumes per company, so the order below follows the crypto-assets and the institutional clients that each custodian states. Banks come after the specialists, because most of them hold crypto for their own customers and publish no separate custody figure.

A company without a banking license needs a full authorization as a crypto-asset service provider under Article 63 of MiCAR, which BaFin grants after it has checked own funds, management and the custody setup. A bank or another licensed institution can instead notify BaFin under Article 60 and provide the same services under the license it already holds; the CASP license describes both procedures. Tangany, Boerse Stuttgart Digital Custody and BitGo Europe took the first route, while Commerzbank, DZ Bank and DekaBank took the second. Under either route the permission is valid across the European Union through the MiCA passport.

Boerse Stuttgart Digital is the crypto and digital asset business of Boerse Stuttgart, and its custody company was the first German crypto provider with a MiCAR authorization from BaFin. The company states more than 5 billion euros in crypto custody and more than 200 institutional clients. Boerse Stuttgart Digital holds the coins behind meinKrypto, the crypto wallet that DZ Bank offers to customers of the Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken, and it runs the custody behind the crypto offer of DekaBank for the Sparkassen. Boerse Stuttgart Digital and the crypto trading firm tradias completed their merger in August 2026.

Tangany is a crypto custodian in Munich that sells custody to other companies through an API, so a bank or a broker can offer crypto without holding private keys itself. Tangany works with more than 60 institutional clients and holds more than 3 billion euros in assets under custody, and it reaches over 700,000 customers in Germany through its partners. Clients named by Tangany include eToro, Bitvavo, finanzen.net ZERO and flatexDEGIRO. Tangany has held a MiCAR authorization for custody, staking and transfers since 2025, and BaFin added a payment services license for e-money tokens in March 2026.

BitGo is a US custodian for institutions, and BitGo Europe GmbH in Frankfurt received its MiCAR authorization from BaFin in May 2025. BitGo reported about 65.2 billion US dollars in assets on its platform at the end of June 2026, a figure for the whole group that includes 11.9 billion US dollars in staked assets. Trade Republic keeps the crypto of its customers in cold wallets of BitGo Europe (in German).

Crypto Finance belongs to Deutsche Börse Group, and its Frankfurt company Crypto Finance (Deutschland) GmbH received a MiCAR authorization from BaFin in January 2025 for custody, trading and transfers. The company also keeps its license for qualified crypto custody under the German Banking Act, which covers crypto securities. Commerzbank executes the crypto trades of its corporate clients through Crypto Finance and holds the coins under its own permission. When Clearstream added bitcoin and ether custody for its institutional clients, it chose Crypto Finance as sub-custodian, Bloomberg reported.

Hauck Aufhäuser Digital Custody is the crypto custody subsidiary of the Frankfurt private bank Hauck Aufhäuser Lampe, which belongs to the Dutch bank ABN AMRO. BaFin authorized the company under MiCAR for the custody and administration of crypto-assets and for transfer services, effective at the end of November 2025 (in German). Hauck Aufhäuser Digital Custody serves institutional clients and can offer its services in other EU countries through the MiCA passport.

Some exchanges hold the crypto of their customers in a German company of their own. Bullish Europe in Frankfurt, part of the institutional exchange Bullish, received a MiCAR authorization from BaFin for trading and custody in September 2025. Bitpanda holds its German custody permission through Bitpanda Asset Management GmbH in Berlin, next to its Austrian authorization, and it supplies the crypto technology behind the offer of LBBW. Bitpanda also ranks among the largest crypto exchanges in Germany by customer numbers.

German retail customers reach crypto mostly through their own bank. DZ Bank holds the MiCAR authorization for meinKrypto, the wallet in the VR Banking App, and each cooperative bank that offers it files its own notification with BaFin. DekaBank notified BaFin for the crypto offer of the Sparkassen. dwpbank, which handles securities settlement for German banks, received permission for crypto custody and transfers in 2026 (press release, in German), and its wpNex platform now holds crypto for the banks that trade through it.

Commerzbank holds bitcoin and ether for corporate clients under its own custody permission and trades through Crypto Finance. Deutsche Bank entered the ESMA register with a custody notification in October 2026; the bank works with Taurus on custody technology, and Cointelegraph reported, citing Bloomberg, that Bitpanda supports the service. Trade Republic provides custody under its banking license and keeps customer coins in cold wallets at BitGo Europe. Berenberg in Hamburg and V-Bank in Munich have notified custody as well, as have IG Europe and Openbank Deutschland.

Finoa in Berlin received three BaFin licenses in 2023 for crypto custody, brokerage and proprietary trading. Finoa now describes itself as a technology infrastructure provider that is not an authorized crypto-asset service provider under MiCAR and does not hold crypto-assets or keys for clients. For that reason Finoa is not on this list, and the ESMA register shows no entry for the company.

Taurus, Fireblocks, Ripple and Ledger sell custody technology to banks and exchanges and hold no client assets themselves. Taurus in Geneva supplies custody software that banks such as Deutsche Bank run under their own permission. Payment firms and banks sign transactions with the MPC wallets of Fireblocks, while the institution that uses them remains the regulated custodian. Ripple sells custody software to banks, and Ledger builds the hardware signers of Ledger Enterprise. MPC wallets split a key into shares, while Hardware security modules keep it inside sealed hardware.

The ESMA MiCA register lists every crypto-asset service provider in the EU, including banks that notified their supervisor under Article 60, and shows which of the ten MiCAR services each company may provide. Custody appears there as the custody and administration of crypto-assets on behalf of clients. The BaFin company database shows the German license of a bank or a financial services institution and the date it was granted. A custody claim in the marketing of a provider proves nothing until the register confirms it.

Crypto custody companies in Germany with a full MiCAR authorization from BaFin include Boerse Stuttgart Digital Custody, Tangany, BitGo Europe, Crypto Finance (Deutschland), Hauck Aufhäuser Digital Custody and Bullish Europe. Banks such as DZ Bank, DekaBank, Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank provide custody after a notification to BaFin. The custody license under the German Banking Act now covers crypto securities only, and crypto custody in Germany sets out when it applies.

Digital asset custody providers in Germany that work mainly for other institutions are Tangany, Boerse Stuttgart Digital Custody, BitGo Europe, Crypto Finance (Deutschland) and Hauck Aufhäuser Digital Custody. A bank or an asset manager either connects its platform to one of them through an API or runs custody in-house with software from a technology provider. In the first model the bank keeps the customer relationship and the app, while the custodian keeps the private keys under its own MiCAR authorization.

Under Article 75 of MiCAR, a custodian keeps the crypto-assets of its clients legally separate from its own estate, so that its creditors have no claim on them in an insolvency. The custodian also keeps a register of positions for each client and has to return the crypto-assets or the means of access to them. The statutory deposit guarantee for bank accounts does not cover crypto-assets, so this separation is what protects a client.

Half of the 18 German companies with custody permission are based in Frankfurt, among them BitGo Europe, Crypto Finance (Deutschland), Bullish Europe and Hauck Aufhäuser Digital Custody. Munich is home to Tangany, V-Bank and Tradevest Digital Assets, while Boerse Stuttgart Digital Custody sits in Stuttgart. Custody specialists from these cities meet at the Crypto Assets Conference and at other events on crypto in Frankfurt.