Deutsche Bank Puts Crypto Custody Weeks Away and Asia in 2027

Deutsche Bank is weeks from holding bitcoin and ether for its own clients, the co-head of its corporate bank said on Friday. Gerald Podobnik told Reuters at the IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok that the German launch is close and that the platform reaches Asian financial centers in 2027. He gave no date. He named no first client. The bank's 16 September release had promised first European clients inside 2026, conditional on regulatory timing, and Friday's interview moved that from a year to a matter of weeks without fixing it to a day.

Bitcoin and ether, or five assets

What a client gets on day one reads differently depending on the account. SpazioCrypto and bitbase both have custody of bitcoin and ether at launch, with on- and off-ramps for major stablecoins in a second phase, and Bitcoin Magazine has major cryptocurrencies first with stablecoin movement later. CryptoTicker, Coingape and The Coin Republic instead put five assets in from the start: bitcoin, ether and the e-money tokens USDC, EURC and EURAU, issued claims redeemable one for one against a currency. That five-name list is the one in the bank's own September release and on its product page. The two readings do not reconcile. bitbase carries the detail that would square them, noting the product page gives custody and transfers as the initial capabilities and not fiat conversion, but no account says so outright.

The bank keeps the keys

Clients will not hold their own private keys, because Deutsche Bank runs the wallets. The controls described across the accounts are hardware security modules, cold and offline storage tiers, approvals that need more than one person, segregation of client assets, and backup and failover arrangements; CryptoTicker adds that clients can set their own approval thresholds. Access comes through the Autobahn portal or the Corporate Bank portal, not a separate application, and the service is provided out of Deutsche Bank AG in Frankfurt with possible passporting across Europe.

One line in the bank's material does the work of a caution. Crypto assets held in custody are not covered by deposit guarantee schemes. CryptoTicker is the only account swept that sets that against the €100,000 per client protection on ordinary account balances, so the comparison is its own and not the bank's.

The 8% belongs to the whole division

Podobnik tied the digital asset work to a target of 8% compound annual growth in corporate banking through 2028. SpazioCrypto and bitbase both state plainly that the target covers the division and not the custody service, a distinction a launch headline tends to lose. Coinpedia renders the same figure as 8% growth by 2028.

"we will need to offer tokenised or blockchain solutions to our clients," Podobnik told Reuters in Bangkok, describing the shift as "not necessarily to replace what we are doing today."

What nobody has published

The gaps are specific. No go-live date, no first live client, no fees or per-asset schedule, no insurance limits, no expected volumes, and no word on which Asian market comes first. Coinpedia alone names Singapore and Hong Kong as the targets, and four other accounts say the bank has not named them. On supervision the reporting thins out too. CryptoTicker alone reports a 2023 BaFin application for a crypto custody license, while The Coin Republic says no national regulator is named anywhere in the bank's own materials and points instead to MiCA's Article 75, the provision setting out the custody agreement, position records and custody policy an EU custodian owes each client.

Taurus, the Swiss firm supplying the infrastructure, appears in CryptoTicker and Coinpedia and is absent from SpazioCrypto and The Coin Republic. Podobnik's own job title splits five accounts to one, co-head of the corporate bank against global head of it. Standard Chartered is a little further along the same road, having set out institutional custody plans in Singapore on 8 October. The test here is narrower than the announcement. Ten weeks of 2026 are left, and a German go-live either lands inside them or the September release's own deadline goes with it.