ING Innovations Lab Spins out Pyctor Crypto Trading Platform

Digital asset post-trade solution Pyctor has been spun out by ING’s innovations lab and acquired by GMEX, a provider of institutional trading technology.

Pyctor provides decentralized custody and settlement for institutions by enabling digital asset private keys to be fragmented and spread across blockchain nodes. These are hosted by regulated institutions using multiparty computation (MPC). It also supports both public and permissioned blockchains.

While the financial terms of the arrangement were kept private, it was reported to be a multi-million dollar deal.

Pyctor an innovation success story

“After spinning out Stemly last year from ING Labs Singapore, Pyctor has been another innovation success story at ING Neo,” said ING’s Olivier Guillaumond.

Pyctor was designed from the outset to fulfill security standards that regulated institutions expect, once crypto regulations come into force and other struggle with compliance.

For instance, one of Pyctor’s products, Pyxis, provides a solution for compliance with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) travel rule for anti-money laundering.

GMEX confident of live network

While GMEX CEO Hirander Misra acknowledged that it is merely buying a proven minimum viable product, he seems confident in the prospect of a live network. “There is a need for a secure MPC-based network where institutions can settle effectively between them,” said Misra.

He compared the move to JPMorgan spinning off enterprise Ethereum client Quorum, which was acquired by Brooklyn-based ConsenSys.

The deal holds several benefits for GMEX. The solution possesses synergies with its existing solutions, such as the GMEX MultiHub, as well as its own client base. Not to mention an ongoing collaboration with ING’s Digital Assets team.

Finally, there is also the prospect of partnering with some of Pyctor’s pilot participants. Meanwhile, GMEX formed a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deliver a seamless crypto trading environment for institutional players.