Liechtenstein’s Bank Frick Launches Institutional Crypto Trading Platform

Liechtenstein-based Bank Frick is launching an institutional cryptocurrency trading platform subsidiary, DLT Markets, Cointelegraph auf Deutsch reported on Feb. 22.

According to the bank’s announcement, DLT Markets will provide institutional investors “with fully regulated and secure multi-exchange access to the digital token asset class.”

Edi Wögerer, CEO of Bank Frick, declared:

“With our spin-off, we are offering institutional clients a unique combination of a fintech company and a bank regulated by the EU[.]”

Roger Wurzel, who previously worked in business development at Bank Frick, has been appointed as the CEO of the new subsidiary, the press release reports. The bank’s former blockchain project developer and co-founder of cloud-based accounting company Styxchange will be responsible for business development at DLT Markets.

Bank Frick, headquartered in Balzers, was founded in 1998 and is majority owned by the Kuno Frick Family Foundation, the press release also notes. According to another press release from April 2018, the bank reported a net profit of 6.3 million Swiss francs (about $6.3 million) in 2017 — nearly double profits of 3.2 million francs (about $3.2 million) registered in the previous year.

According to the same report, the bank managed 3.81 billion francs (about $3.8 billion) in client funds at the time of publication.

DLT Markets is not the bank’s first venture into the crypto sphere. As Cointelegraph reported in March last year, Bank Frick also offers “direct investment” in and cold storage of five major cryptocurrencies.

More recently, news broke that Liechtensteinische Post AG, the country’s state postal service, plans to offer cryptocurrency exchange services at their physical locations.