Share this article
ING Bank Spins Off Its Crypto Custody Platform to GMEX Group
Pyctor will continue to work with the Dutch bank.
By Ian Allison
Updated Apr 9, 2024, 11:49 p.m. Published Jul 11, 2022, 7:24 a.m.
Make us preferred on Google
Netherlands-based ING Bank has spun off Pyctor, its cryptocurrency custody and post-trade infrastructure platform, to GMEX Group, a trading infrastructure firm that specializes in digital assets.
GMEX CEO Hirander Misra was appointed chairman of Pyctor, which will continue to work with ING, according to a press release. Financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
Pyctor was incubated in ING Neo’s Amsterdam innovation lab. It combines hardware-based security favored by banks with software-based "sharding" of keys used to move digital assets, a process that's known as "multi-party computation."
Misra said the move was comparable with JPMorgan Chase spinning off Quorum, a private blockchain that was split from the Ethereum blockchain, to ConsenSys, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based crypto firm.
For its part, GMEX formed a partnership with Amazon Web Services last December to help provide cloud-based trading.
“It made sense for ING to spin Pyctor out and then it becomes much more neutral,” Misra said in an interview. “We’ve got a strong go to market with the likes of AWS and others, and the bank can capitalize on that. These networks are all about wider adoption, so getting beyond a single player or a small set of players.”
Hervé Francois, the digital assets lead at ING Bank, who was also CEO of Pyctor for four years, told CoinDesk that he is leaving ING.
More For You
From FTX debris to global finance: Solana’s 2026 plan is all about the application layer
Resilience built from the debris of 2022 is now shaping the Solana ecosystems future, leaders from Jupiter, Backpack, Kamino and DoubleZero argued at Consensus Hong Kong 2026.
What to know:
- A few years after the collapse of FTX nearly took it down by association, Solana’s core builders say the network’s next phase will be defined not by survival, but by scaling into global finance.
- While Solana became known during the last cycle for memecoin mania and speculative trading, the next chapter will center on bringing more traditional finance onchain, panellists argued at Consensus Hong Kong 2026.
- Upcoming upgrades aimed at reducing latency and improving confirmation times are expected to strengthen Solana’s pitch as a high-performance, general-purpose execution layer. But the panel cautioned against complacency.
Top Stories
