Deutsche Bank-backed Taurus recently received approval from FINMA to offer tokenized securities to retail investors through the TDX marketplace. Lamine Brahimi, co-founder and managing partner at Swiss Taurus discussed the regulatory challenges and navigation process with CryptoSlate.
Since April 2018, Taurus has focused on developing institutional-quality technology and processes. Demonstrating compliance, anti-money laundering measures and investor protection were critical to approval, ensuring safe and compliant access, investment and trading in digital securities on TDX.
Brahimi envisions a tokenization, which would make purchasing company shares as easy as buying a book online. He believes that the digitalization of private markets can have a significant impact on the financial sector. However, barriers such as the adoption of global tokenization standards, regulated secondary markets and large-scale tokenized cash solutions remain. Taurus is addressing these through strategic initiatives, including chairing the Technology Committee of the Capital Markets & Technology Association (CMTA) in Switzerland, launching TDX and scaling clients’ digital asset businesses globally.
Strategic partnerships with leading banks such as Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and AMINA Bank have been integral to Taurus’ success. These collaborations are aimed at providing future-proof technology and a platform that manages various digital assets. Brahimi emphasizes the importance of technology control and customer demand for innovative digital asset products. Despite the AI hype, regulatory and customer interest in tokenized assets remains high, with 80% of customers using Taurus’ tokenization platform in addition to custody solutions.
Looking ahead, Brahimi expects tokenization to become more common as regulatory frameworks strengthen and institutional adoption increases.
Taurus recently received approval from FINMA to offer tokenized securities to retail investors through the TDX marketplace. Can you walk us through the regulatory challenges you faced and how Taurus navigated the approval process? What impact do you think this development will have on the democratization of access to these assets?
Since its founding in April 2018, Taurus has focused on developing a robust organization with institutional-quality technology and processes. The challenges were many and the standards were exceptionally high. We had to demonstrate to the regulator and our auditors that Taurus met strict criteria in the areas of: technology and security readiness, compliance, anti-money laundering measures and investor protection.
This allows retail, professional and institutional investors to access, invest and trade the full spectrum of digital securities accepted, invested and traded on TDX in a secure and compliant manner.
You’ve expressed a vision of making it as easy to buy a share of a company as it is to buy a book on Amazon. Can you elaborate on the potential impact of tokenization on traditional financial markets? What are the main barriers to widespread adoption, and how is Taurus working to overcome them?
Taurus’ core belief is that private markets (private equity, private debt and other real asset classes) must be digitized to make the digital asset industry a deca-trillion. Why? Because their infrastructure is still largely paper-based, unlike the public markets which are already electronic.
Regulation is becoming increasingly constructive, but the main barriers to widespread adoption that I see are (i) adoption of global tokenization standards (ii) regulated secondary markets (iii) mega custodians entering the space (iv) large-scale tokenized cash solutions that go beyond the USD, that is: in EUR, CHF, GBP, Yen etc. to have both the securities part and the cash part onchain.
We have taken modest but concrete steps to address these challenges. Among them, Taurus is Chairman of the Technology Committee (Dr. Jean-Philippe Aumasson) of the Capital Markets & Technology Association (CMTA) in Switzerland. This group is responsible for defining tokenization (CMTAT) and custody standards to facilitate the adoption of distributed ledger technology. We also launched TDX, one of the world’s first regulated marketplaces, to increase liquidity for tokenized securities. We’re also helping some of our largest clients scale their digital asset businesses around the world.
Taurus has formed strategic partnerships with several leading banks, including Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and AMINA Bank. What motivated these collaborations and what challenges have you encountered in integrating traditional finance with crypto? How do you see these partnerships evolving in the future?
When banks consider entering the digital asset space, they often consider two main dimensions:
- Banks want a future-proof technology partner. The risk of technology becoming obsolete – in a rapidly changing innovation environment – is high. Therefore, it is critical to choose a technology provider that manages the entire technology stack, including the most complex cryptography, software, hardware, distributed systems and systems. This is exactly what we have managed to build at Taurus.
- They also want a platform that allows them to manage all digital assets, in addition to cryptocurrencies, i.e. tokenized assets (any type), digital currencies etc. Taurus has been the first provider to enable customers to manage all digital assets on both public and permissioned blockchains to manage. .
Despite the AI hype, the future looks solid as regulations in most major financial centers become increasingly constructive and customer demand for innovative digital asset products increases. 80% of our customers now use our tokenization platform in addition to our custody solution. We are working on groundbreaking transactions in tokenized funds, cash and debt. Stay tuned.
You have a unique background, having worked in both the traditional financial sector and the crypto industry. What motivated your transition into the crypto space, and how has your experience in traditional finance influenced your approach at Taurus?
I was trained as an engineer at EPFL in Switzerland. I moved to corporate, but it happened that I was leading the digital transformation of the bank I worked for before founding Taurus. This meant I was always close to what was new on the financial markets. Long story short: one day in 2016 I was asked to give an introduction to blockchain and bitcoin for some clients and it was a revelation.
My co-founders and I have always believed that distributed ledger technologies will have an increasingly positive impact on our economy, starting with financial markets whose infrastructure was designed decades ago and eventually managing traditional assets and digital assets ubiquitously.
That’s why we officially launched Taurus in 2018. The available infrastructure did not meet our needs, nor those of the banks, which we knew very well. So we started building from the ground up – and with a lot of hard work and some luck, we made a name for ourselves in the industry.
Taurus is at the forefront of tokenization efforts and is working with several Swiss companies to tokenize their assets. Can you share some success stories or challenges you have encountered during this process? How do you see the tokenization landscape evolving in the coming years?
There are many. Some include trade finance transactions that we tokenized end-to-end with Horizon Capital and SCCF, Luxembourg and Swiss trade finance experts.
Another example is our collaboration with Cité Gestion, the first private bank in the world to tokenize its shares. Another success story is our work with Qoqa, a community-based e-commerce company with almost 1 million customers, where we helped them raise CHF 1 million for their community project in just 22 minutes. We helped Qoqa issue equity tokens, which represent ownership shares in the subsidiary, and helped their community members become direct stakeholders in the project.
Looking ahead, we foresee tokenization becoming mainstream in private capital markets. As regulatory frameworks strengthen and institutional adoption increases, we expect to see a rise in tokenized real-world assets. This will lead to greater liquidity, fractional ownership opportunities and more efficient trading of traditionally illiquid assets. Our partnerships with companies like Swissroc in real estate and SCCF in trade finance are just the beginning. I look forward to our collaboration with major custodians – you’ll see tokenized funds on the market and on TDX soon.