US financial services firm and banking platform to launch digital asset custody services underpinned by Tier-1 bank-grade technology
LevelField Financial, the premier U.S. financial services firm uniting digital assets and traditional banking services in one trusted platform has selected METACO, the market-leading provider of digital asset custody orchestration technology to complex, global financial institutions. LevelField is deploying its institutional digital asset management operations on IBM Cloud in order to leverage the confidential computing capabilities of IBM’s digital asset infrastructure.
Founded by banking executives with decades of global experience, LevelField is in the process of acquiring a federally chartered bank in the United States. To launch its digital asset offering, LevelField will use METACO’s digital asset custody and orchestration platform, Harmonize, helping enable clients to securely store, trade, and settle digital assets. Harmonize was built in partnership with Tier 1 banks and offers the highest standards of security and compliance for LevelField to operate in the digital assets sector. This foundational infrastructure provides LevelField with the option to further expand its digital asset offering in the future, in a highly-scalable and efficient manner.
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LevelField will deploy Harmonize, which is supported by IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services¹. This setup will allow LevelField to scale to millions of wallets, while maintaining control over private keys for risk management. IBM’s Digital Asset Infrastructure is designed to help custodians achieve greater results when using METACO’s Harmonize platform, including enhanced scalability, security, and compliance.
IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Services is designed to enable METACO Vaults to store encrypted keys externally in a database while affording the protections of IBM’s FIPS 140-2 Level 4 rated hardware security modules (HSM). With external storage of keys enabled by IBM’s master encryption key technology, custodians can scale to billions of wallets. The sensitive processing on METACO Harmonize is secured by IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Virtual Servers hardware-based, Common Criteria-certified isolation. IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Secure Build Server is designed to reduce risks of malicious code insertion during Harmonize deployments and address unauthorized rule manipulation by working to make policies on the platform tamper proof. Irrespective of how Harmonize is consumed, custodians retain physical control of the root of trust of the assets and the policies that govern management of the assets, through the IBM HSM Smartcards.
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Seamus Donoghue, VP of Strategic Alliances at METACO commented, “We’re pleased to support LevelField in realizing its vision of uniting digital assets with traditional finance to create the most trusted banking platform of the future. Harmonize provides bank-grade security and compliance for the custody and management of digital assets, as well as the agility for innovative firms like LevelField to go-to-market and scale quickly. With a flexible governance policy framework that can be applied to any type of digital asset transaction, a no-single-point-of-failure model, and the optionality to expand and offer any type of digital asset services, Harmonize provides a highly secure and flexible foundation for LevelField to manage its digital asset operations, both today and well into the future.”
Established in Houston in 2018, and currently pending a banking charter, LevelField aims to blend digital banking, securities, and digital assets to provide a comprehensive banking service for the digital economy. The firm is building a customer- focused financial services platform for digital and traditional assets that leverages the strengths of the U.S. banking system, is built on a solid foundation of regulatory compliance, and draws on its management team’s expertise across traditional banking.
Michael Clayton, CTO, LevelField, commented “LevelField is comprised of career bankers who deeply understand the importance of compliance and security. We searched for the platform that would enable us to meet our rigorous standards for security and compliance, while also giving us the flexibility to grow our digital asset business in any direction. METACO’s Harmonize orchestration platform, supported by IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services, is the ideal solution and something which may become the gold-standard in the industry. This infrastructure enables us to demonstrate our compliance and the highest levels of security no matter what area of digital assets we expand into.”
METACO, the leading technology provider in the digital asset ecosystem, has significant implementations with Tier 1 banks, exchanges and other financial institutions. Its platform, Harmonize, delivers the most secure, compliant and flexible custody solution in the market, in combination with the end-to-end, secure orchestration of workflows and governance processes across the entire digital asset stack, with no single point of compromise.
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