Hex Trust announces partnership with Hedera

By Leandra Monteiro

Hex Trust, Asia’s digital asset custodian, today announced its partnership with Hedera Hashgraph, the most used, sustainable, enterprise-grade public ledger for the decentralized economy. Hex Trust has integrated the Hedera network and the Hedera Token Service (HTS) standard into Hex Safe, its bank-grade custody platform, enabling support for HBAR, the Hedera network’s native cryptocurrency, and all HTS issuances on the protocol. Hex Trust is now well-positioned as an official custodian to support and provide services for the growing Hedera ecosystem.

Additionally, Hex Trust has been appointed as a strategic custodian of TOKO, a digital asset creation engine empowering value creation, delivered in collaboration with DLA Piper, a Hedera Governing Council member. Notably, TOKO has appointed BCW Group to lead the TOKO program development and strategic partnerships to enhance the platform’s ecosystem offerings.

Hex Trust was established in Hong Kong in 2018 by veteran banking technologists Alessio Quaglini, Rafal Czerniawski and award-winning financial services experts to empower regulated financial institutions to adopt digital assets. As Asia’s leading asset custodian, Hex Trust provides the industry’s most comprehensive custody solution with enterprise-grade security, features and connectivity to the digital asset ecosystem. Hex Trust has one of the industry’s broadest digital assets services including cryptocurrencies, security tokens and NFTs. Hex Trust adopts a fully-licensed approach and has a range of banking sector clients across Asia and Europe, providing the link that connects the traditional financial world to the digital assets ecosystem.

Hedera Hashgraph is the most used enterprise-grade public ledger for the decentralized economy. The Hedera network offers stable governance with no forking, low and predictable transaction fees, fairness, built-in compliance, real-time settlement, and sustainable energy consumption – all of which are driving massive adoption. Globally recognized projects are turning to the Hedera Consensus Service (HCS), used for high-throughput, inexpensive, and publicly verifiable logging of data; and the Hedera Token Service (HTS), used for native token issuance, management, and transfer. The HTS allows users to issue digital tokens for any asset on Hedera’s decentralized ledger at the native layer, so that they can instantly and securely transfer value without an intermediary. Anything representing value can be tokenized and transferred, and its value can be redeemed anywhere in the world. Tokens deployed via the HTS benefit from the same high performance, security, and efficiency as hbar.

In November 2020, Hedera Hashgraph, in collaboration with DLA Piper launched the tokenization engine, TOKO – a digital asset creation engine that couples the compliance and regulatory rigour of a global law firm with the innovative technology solutions of tomorrow. TOKO provides a platform for creating new markets and uses distributed ledger technology to disseminate market information and provide transparency.

Alessio Quaglini, CEO and co-founder, Hex Trust, “Hedera Hashgraph has our full support as one of the most promising next-generation blockchain platforms pioneering new standards in the global decentralized economy. With this collaboration, Hex Trust facilitates the expansion of the enterprise-grade protocol by providing banks, financial institutions, and institutional investors a safe, secure, and compliant way to integrate HTS-based tokens into their digital assets operations. Working closely with TOKO (a wholly-owned subsidiary of DLA Piper) as a strategic custodian further demonstrates our commitment to implementing robust compliance standards and protecting investor interests.”

Mance Harmon, CEO and co-founder, Hedera, “With its focus on the highest security standards and enterprise-grade workflows, and rigorous approach to compliance, Hex Trust has established itself as a leading, bank-grade, Asian digital asset custodian. Given TOKO’s traction in the asset tokenization market, we are excited to see Hex Trust appointed as an official custodian of TOKO, as a next step in the evolution of the growing digital assets ecosystem being built on the Hedera network.

Scott Thiel, Technology partner at DLA Piper and the leading lawyer for TOKO, “The integration of the HEX Trust custody solution with TOKO is a key milestone in the development of the digital asset ecosystem. Following on from successful TOKO projects using HTS, this custodial integration will allow us to deliver more complex projects and to support asset-backed token issuances using either regulated or unregulated tokens and legal structures. The vertical integration of the Hedera native Token will allow us to deliver on our vision to empower value creation.”