IOTA & Partners Develop KYC Solution That Incorporates Tokenization + More Crypto News

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of blockchain and crypto news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s news.

In today’s crypto news edition:

• IOTA & Partners Develop KYC Solution That Incorporates Tokenization
• WisdomTree Reports AUM Hitting Record High For 3rd Consecutive Month
• Finastra and Tesselate Launch New Service to Accelerate Trade Finance Digitalization for US Banks

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IOTA & Partners Develop KYC Solution That Incorporates Tokenization

The IOTA Foundation announced that it is collaborating with a walt.id, IDnow, Bloom Wallet, and Spyce5 to develop a Know Your Customer (KYC) solution that “incorporates tokenization for efficient and secure user authentication in Web3 applications, both on- and off-chain.”

According to the blog post, the team aims to provide a solution that meets strict authentication requirements, respects user privacy, and minimizes the burden on decentralized apps (dapps).

Per the post,

“This tool enables users to verify their identity in Web3 applications while maintaining control over their information.”

Upcoming EU and global crypto regulations will require obliged entities to implement strict KYC and anti-money laundering (AML) measures. But tools for authenticating users in Web3 applications, argues IOTA, lack the strong guarantees necessary to identify the person behind a blockchain address.

As regulatory requirements in the crypto industry increase, the demand for easy and simple identity verification tools for Web3 apps will likely increase as well.

“Our solution aims to protect personal data and ensures that it is never recorded on-chain.”

Also, users maintain complete control over their data. They can identify themselves with various Web3 applications.

Therefore, the partners have designed a reusable KYC system, fully compliant with regulatory standards, to onboard users to dapps and apps, said the blog post.

WisdomTree Reports AUM Hitting Record High For 3rd Consecutive Month

Asset manager WisdomTree has released monthly metrics for January 2024, including assets under management (AUM) and flow data by asset class.

It reported that some $1 billion of net inflows generated a 21% pace of YTD organic growth across the equity franchise.

WisdomTree said it saw its AUM hitting a record high for the third consecutive month.

Furthermore, there was a positive fee impact from “strong flows into a mix of high fee funds.” These include:

• Japan Hedged Equity Fund: 0.48% fee rate, +$405 million net inflows;
• India Earnings Fund: 0.85% fee rate, +$226 million net inflows;
• S. Quality Dividend Growth Fund: 0.28% fee rate, +$248 million net inflows.

These outpace outflows in Floating Rate Treasury Fund: 0.15% fee rate, -$412 million net outflows.

Moreover, the company reported outflows in the Commodity and Currency category. It is driven primarily by profit-taking and de-risking in Oil and Gold products. Also, it’s partially offset by strength in Copper flows.

Notably, in January, the company launched WisdomTree Bitcoin Fund (BTCW) in the US. It expanded WisdomTree Prime to 38 states and nearly 70% of the US population, it said.

Meanwhile, WisdomTree currently has some $100.3 billion in assets under management globally.

Finastra and Tesselate Launch New Service to Accelerate Trade Finance Digitalization for US Banks

In other crypto news, global provider of financial software applications and marketplaces Finastra and global digital transformation consultancy and integrator Tesselate announced the launch of an end-to-end pre-packaged service for faster and easier trade finance digitalization.

According to the press release, Tegula Trade Finance as a Service is powered by Finastra Trade Innovation and Corporate Channels. It enables US banks to automate manual processes and adapt to new demands with a quicker time to market and value.

It stated that,

“Via Finastra’s FusionFabric.cloud, banks can also seamlessly integrate fintech applications that use the latest technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and automation tools.”

Also, Alexandre Arnoux, Chief Revenue Officer and Managing Partner at Tesselate, stated that adopting new technology can be costly at every stage. “It can be challenging to resource IT teams with the right skills to manage it.”

This new tool is an all-in-one joint solution, he said. “Banks do not need to invest in significant amounts of additional resources or take them away from their core business to pursue digitalization.” They can take “a modular approach to implementation for better cost and resource control, and we provide the ongoing updates, enhancements, and new capabilities at speed.”

That said, Finastra and Tesselate are working to accelerate trade finance digitalization for any size of bank, Arnoux said.