The German crypto custodian Finoa is getting reinforcements. With fresh heads, the start-up is sticking to its growth path.
There is hardly a way around Finoa in the German custody landscape. The company, founded in 2018, has established itself as a door opener for professional investors in German-speaking countries through secure custody solutions for crypto assets. In addition to its core business, Finoa has now also specialized in staking. It was only in April that the “gateway for institutional investors and companies to interact with digital assets” successfully completed a EUR 22 million financing round. With the funds, the company continues to expand and welcomed now three new heads in our own ranks.
Finoa likes growth
Michael Heinks, who can already look back on many years of experience in the banking sector and was on the board of directors at biw AG and flatex Bank AG, will be responsible for the regulation area. His focus at Finoa is therefore “the development of a sustainable compliance and risk strategy”, which focuses “on preparing the organization for further regulatory approvals”. Heinks will take on the role of Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) and will also act as the third managing director of Finoa.
Henrik Jondell, as the new Chief Technology Officer (CTO), will be responsible for the further technical development of the platform. His area of responsibility therefore includes “the technical strategy, the technical architecture and the associated organization and processes”. Jondell also brings a lot of experience to the team. For more than 30 years he has been “building up large and small tech organizations” and was most recently Vice President IT for Arvato Financial Solutions and CTO at Penta.
Last but not least, Chris Sutherland will join Finoa as the new Chief Security Officer (CSO). As such, he is responsible for “security architecture, risk assessment and mitigation, and cyber and physical security”. Sutherland is not a blank slate either. He holds a PhD in cryptography and has 20 years of professional experience in the cyber industry. With his additional banking background at ING and the Bank of Montreal, he fits in perfectly with Finoa.
“To New Heights”
With the growth, Finoa is positioning itself well on many levels and is accordingly looking to the future with anticipation, as Christopher May, Co-CEO and co-founder of Finoa, explains:
The experience these three bring to the table is truly remarkable and we are proud to have brought them all on board. Chris’ experience in the security industry, Michael’s expertise in financial regulation, and Henrik’s ability to help companies scale their tech development will take Finoa to new heights.
The second co-CEO and co-founder, Henrik Gebbing, also agrees: “Finoa is at an exciting and crucial point”. The coming months should actually be exciting, and not just in terms of developments in the crypto market. With the drafts for the crypto value transfer regulation and taxation of crypto currencies, a sharp headwind for German crypto service providers is finally indicated.
Coffin nail cryptocurrency transfer regulation?
Henrik Gebbing is calm towards BTC-ECHO. Overall, there is still a lot of clarification and gaps in the draft. The basic approach, however, of embedding the crypto ecosystem in regulations, could also be understood as an opportunity:
In general, we applaud the government’s intention to act on the FATF’s anti-money laundering proposals as we want to maintain the highest AML standards even at Finoa. Nevertheless, we believe that the “Crypto Value Transfer Regulation” in its current form attempts to replicate measures from the traditional financial system without taking into account the different underlying technology stacks and possibilities. This applies in particular to on-chain analytics and risk scoring, which avoid unnecessary data collection from market participants and still lead to efficient AML processes. In addition, we see the risk that a national approach, instead of an EU or even global approach, could lead to a significant location disadvantage for the German crypto market.
With the new faces in the team, Finoa seems well equipped for the tightened attempts at regulation by politicians. In addition, the company could not complain about a lack of demand. Compared to countries like the USA, Germany still has a lot of growth potential. Overall, however, there is increasing interest in crypto custody solutions, as Christopher May explains to us:
In fact, we are seeing a growing interest in German customers in participating in the crypto ecosystem and thus also an increasing interest in custody solutions. This is a development that we very much support, but compared to developments in other countries (e.g. USA, Switzerland) the German institutions are still lagging behind.
In an interview, Pekuna boss Werner Hoffmann explained to us what effects the tax draft of the Federal Ministry of Finance could have on investors.