Bitcoin Wallet Conio, Coinbase Team Up to Bring Crypto to Italian Banks

Conio, a cryptocurrency wallet company partly owned by Poste Italiane and Banca Generali, has teamed up with Coinbase (COIN) to bring a wide range of digital assets to Italian banks and financial institutions, the companies said on Monday.

Conio, which has over 400,000 customers, is collaborating with Coinbase Prime to provide liquidity for institutions catering to digital assets while extending wallet support for up to 50 tokens by the end of 2023.

A wave of confidence in crypto is sweeping across Europe’s banks and institutions, driven by things like the incipient Markets in Crypto Assets regulation and a general interest in areas like tokenization.

“Conio created the first multisig 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,” said Conio general manager Orlando Merone in an interview. “We are adding EVM [Ethereum Virtual Machine] chains, and the target is to cover almost 60% of the digital assets market by next year.”

Conio is also deeply involved in the institutional uptake of digital assets, specifically the Euro Token project overseen by the innovation center of the Bank of Italy.

“The Bank of Italy is in touch with a lot of projects and looking closely at the market,” Merone said. “In terms of the fintech industry, with tokenization, you are going to completely rework e-money most probably. It’s great that they are championing the Italian digital assets space.”