What is custody?
Custody is where you use a Trusted 3rd Party to store your Cryptocurrency if you're not confident enough to store your own Private Keys.
A custodial service called Polysign Inc have announced they are launching in 2020. They were established in 2017 and have been quietly developing their service since 2017.
The most interesting part of this story are the players involved. Guess who were the Architects? None other than David Schwarze and Arthur Britto of Ripple / XRP fame.
Jack McDonald CEO and Board Member
Prior to joining PolySign, Jack McDonald was CEO of Conifer Financial Services for a decade, where he grew AUA from $5B to $125B culminating in a successful exit in 2016. Before Conifer, Jack was the Managing Director and Head of West Coast Equities at UBS. Jack was named one of the ‘20 Rising Stars of Hedge Funds’ by Institutional Investor Magazine and inducted into Global Custodian's 'Legends of The Industry'.
Arthur Britto President, Founder and Board Member Arthur Britto co-founded Ripple and designed the XRP ledger. Ripple has grown to over $30 billion in assets in just 5 years. Prior to Ripple, Arthur was CEO of Information Access Technologies Inc., one of the first ISPs. Arthur is a renowned technical leader in the digital asset space. Antoinette O’Gorman Chief Compliance Officer Prior to joining PolySign, Antoinette was CCO of Ripple Labs Inc., a San Francisco-based, financial technology software company, where she was responsible for building, directing and overseeing the company's U.S. and global compliance requirements for cross-border payments, blockchain-based distributed financial technologies, and cryptocurrencies.
Previously, Antoinette managed corporate anti-money laundering and sanctions programs for a number of global banks and worked with Promontory Financial Group, LLC, as a consultant to banks and other financial institutions on anti-money laundering compliance and risk management matters.
Kimon Papahadjopoulos
Chief Technology Officer
Kimon Papahadjopoulos comes to PolySign as a software process expert, having directed software processes for teams of over 600 engineers at companies like Hewlett Packard, DataDirect Networks and EMC. In addition, he managed software teams at Hewlett Packard and worked in the CTO’s office. Kimon is also a competitive inline and short track speed skater.
Anna Tong VP Product
Anna Tong has worked for a decade at different technology companies. Prior to PolySign, she was the first product manager at Ripple, where she led all of Ripple’s consumer products, such as their exchange product and the first version of xRapid. She also led product and customer success at HomeLight, a series B funded real estate tech startup. Before working in startups, she worked at Google on their product and operations teams. Anna is a graduate of Harvard University.
David Schwartz Board member
David Schwartz is Chief Technology Officer at Ripple. Along with Arthur Britto, David was one of the original architects of the Ripple consensus network. Prior to joining Ripple, David Schwartz was Chief Technical Officer for WebMaster Incorporated, a Santa Clara software developer. He developed encrypted cloud storage and enterprise messaging systems for organizations like CNN and the National Security Agency (NSA).
Tim Keaney Senior Advisor and Board Member
Tim Keaney was the Vice Chairman of BNY Mellon, where he oversaw the firm’s Investment Services businesses, including the Custody and Fund Administration Business with responsibility for the oversight of 25% of the world’s investable assets. Prior to that, he was the BNY Mellon Chairman of Europe, Middle East and Africa. He is also Chairman of the Risk and Finance Committee and member of the Audit Committee at UNUM, a Fortune 200 Insurance company.
Why is custody important? Because (1) it allows average people who are not tech savvy to get into crypto and know that their investment is safe and (2) it will be utilised by the institutional investors.
BNY Mellon, JPMorgan, Citigroup and State Street are the names to watch next when it comes to the diversification of established qualified custody. They are responsible for more than half of the custody industry and had a combined $114 trillion in assets in custody and administration at the end of Q2 2018.
The facility of holding crypto in custody services will give a significant boost to the crypto market.
AFFILIATE LINKS
If you enjoy reading and/or writing, why not earn some crypto for you effort.
If you like fast, secure anonymous browsing without intrusive, annoying ads this the the browser you should be using.
