Coinbase Brings Digital Assets to Italian Banks

The leading US crypto exchange has joined forces with Bitcoin Wallet Conio to give Italian financial institutions access to digital assets.

Coinbase and Conio, a cryptocurrency wallet company partly owned by Banca Generali and Poste Italiane, have joined forces to bring a wide variety of digital assets to Italian banks and financial institutions, CoinDesk reported, citing an announcement by the companies on Monday.

Wallet will support up to 50 tokens

Conio, which has almost half a million customers, is working together with Coinbase Prime to provide liquidity for banks that support crypto. The platform will support up to 50 tokens by the end of the year.

A wave of confidence in digital assets

European banks and financial institutions are starting to embrace crypto against the backdrop of rising asset prices, increasing interest in tokenization, and the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation taking legal effect. Orlando Merone, general manager of Conio, said in an interview:

Conio created the first multi-signature Bitcoin wallet for smartphones in Italy, and we are now enlarging the custody capabilities because Italian banks are demanding more in the way of digital assets. We are adding EVM Ethereum Virtual Machine chains, and the target is to cover almost 60% of the digital assets market by next year.

Commitment to Euro Token

Conio is also deeply committed to the Euro Token project and other digital asset projects. Euro Token is overseen by the Bank of Italy. There is increasing interest in digital assets from Italian institutions.

Merone added that the Italian Central Bank was in touch with numerous platforms and was observing the market closely in terms of the influence of the fintech industry. In his opinion, tokenization will have a profound impact on electronic funds and it’s commendable that Italian institutions are becoming active in the digital assets space.