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DeFi Custodian Trustology Gets Green Light From UK’s FCA

The march toward institution-friendly DeFi continues.

Updated May 11, 2023, 7:01 p.m. Published Oct 5, 2021, 2:30 p.m.
The offices of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in London. (Getty Images)
The offices of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in London. (Getty Images)

Cryptocurrency custodian Trustology has been granted a full registration by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), one of a handful of firms to have been upgraded from the U.K. regulator’s temporary registration list.

In addition to the gamut of anti-money laundering (AML) checks, the FCA grilled Trustology about the custody firm’s speciality in decentralized finance (DeFi), said CEO Alex Batlin.

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“The engagement was really good when we started talking about what we do for DeFi,” said Batlin. “They were very open, listened a lot and asked questions in order to understand how we do AML checks around DeFi.”

Getting DeFi institution-ready with added AML and know-your-customer (KYC) checks is now the focus of a number of firms, with solutions ranging from Aave whitelists to decentralized identity plays and even hardware security modules.

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Trustology created a “DeFi Firewall” approach, by which a set of rules in a smart contract can block certain transactions and allow others; swaps on Uniswap might be allowed, while more exotic and less battle-tested platforms would be ruled out. Trustology is adding more features for 2022, such as a transaction decoder, said Batlin.

“If someone has compromised a website where you use a dapp, if it’s been hacked, instead of sending something to Uniswap you could just be forwarding funds to a thief,” he said, adding:

“So we decode the transaction you are about to sign, and then we look it up in our registry, and instead of a load of binary, we give you a text saying, ‘You are about to do a swap of ETH for DAI on Uniswap,’ for example.”

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Exchange Review March 2025

CoinDesk Data's monthly Exchange Review captures the key developments within the cryptocurrency exchange market. The report includes analyses that relate to exchange volumes, crypto derivatives trading, market segmentation by fees, fiat trading, and more.

What to know:

Trading activity softened in March as market uncertainty grew amid escalating tariff tensions between the U.S. and global trading partners. Centralized exchanges recorded their lowest combined trading volume since October, declining 6.24% to $6.79tn. This marked the third consecutive monthly decline across both market segments, with spot trading volume falling 14.1% to $1.98tn and derivatives trading slipping 2.56% to $4.81tn.

  • Trading Volumes Decline for Third Consecutive Month: Combined spot and derivatives trading volume on centralized exchanges fell by 6.24% to $6.79tn in March 2025, reaching the lowest level since October. Both spot and derivatives markets recorded their third consecutive monthly decline, falling 14.1% and 2.56% to $1.98tn and $4.81tn respectively.
  • Institutional Crypto Trading Volume on CME Falls 23.5%: In March, total derivatives trading volume on the CME exchange fell by 23.5% to $175bn, the lowest monthly volume since October 2024. CME's market share among derivatives exchanges dropped from 4.63% to 3.64%, suggesting declining institutional interest amid current macroeconomic conditions. 
  • Bybit Spot Market Share Slides in March: Spot trading volume on Bybit fell by 52.1% to $81.1bn in March, coinciding with decreased trading activity following the hack of the exchange's cold wallets in February. Bybit's spot market share dropped from 7.35% to 4.10%, its lowest since July 2023.

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