Taurus, the crypto custody and tokenization specialist, has taken a major step into Europe’s regulated capital markets after securing a MiFID II investment services license in Cyprus from the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC).
The new licence empowers Taurus to offer MiFID-regulated investment services for tokenized financial instruments across the European Union. That includes not only custody and issuance work but also secondary trading of tokenized bonds, fund shares, equities and structured products — essentially enabling traditional market participants to trade blockchain-native versions of familiar securities within the EU regulatory framework.
“Banks like to face fully regulated entities that are similar to the one they used to work with,” said Sébastien Dessimoz, Taurus co-founder and Managing Partner. “All the brokers in Europe are MiFID licensed firms, and Taurus is a broker also and now a MiFID licensed firm. So those banks and institutions can be sure we are subject to all the necessary guarantees – on top of that we're onshore in Europe, which is also highly appreciated.”
MiFID II (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II) is the EU’s core rulebook for investment services, trading venues and traditional financial instruments such as equities, bonds, derivatives and structured products. Holding a MiFID licence gives firms a regulated passport to operate as investment service providers across the bloc — a crucial credential for onboarding banks and institutional asset managers.
For Taurus, the licence is designed to bridge its crypto-native infrastructure with the regulatory perimeter used by incumbent financial institutions, allowing tokenized securities to be delivered in the formats institutional clients expect. The company already counts global banks and custodians among its partners, including Deutsche Bank, ClearBank, KBC, Santander, State Street, CACEIS, Pictet and Swissquote.
Taurus is no stranger to regulated markets: it holds a Swiss licence from FINMA and has an EU Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) application underway, Dessimoz confirmed. As a fully regulated European entity, Taurus can now provide classical investment services for transferable securities while simultaneously enabling clients to buy and sell distributed ledger technology (DLT) financial instruments — tokenized equity, tokenized debt and tokenized fund shares — when those crypto-assets qualify as MiFID financial instruments.
The move also puts Taurus alongside other crypto platforms that have secured MiFID II licences in recent years, such as OKX, Gemini, Crypto.com, Kraken, Bitstamp and Perpetuals.com. For banks and asset managers looking to experiment with tokenized securities, Taurus’ new status is likely to make it a more palatable, onshore counterparty in the evolving intersection of capital markets and blockchain.
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