AMINA Bank has become the first regulated bank to join 21X, the European Union’s first fully regulated distributed-ledger trading and settlement venue for securities, as a listing sponsor.
The Swiss crypto-focused bank, which is supervised by FINMA, said it will support issuers looking to list tokenized instruments on 21X, a Frankfurt-based platform licensed under the EU’s DLT Pilot Regime, bringing a regulated banking player into the core of the bloc’s experimental infrastructure for trading and settling securities on blockchain rails.
Bank, Tokenization Platform, and Venue in One Stack
The tie-up links three pieces of institutional tokenization infrastructure: AMINA for banking and custody, Tokeny for issuance, and 21X for trading and settlement.
AMINA will provide institutional-grade custody and banking for underlying traditional assets, including government bonds, corporate securities, treasury bills, and other financial instruments. In its role as listing sponsor, it will guide issuers through the process of structuring and bringing tokenized products to market on 21X.
Tokeny, an Apex Group company that services more than $3.5 trillion in assets, provides the tokenization platform and oversees smart contract deployment and compliance, ensuring that investor checks and transfer restrictions are built directly into the digital securities.
21X, licensed by German regulator BaFin with the contribution of ESMA, operates the regulated trading and settlement system, enabling primary issuance and secondary trading of tokenized financial instruments, with atomic settlement via smart contracts designed to remove the need for central securities depositories and clearing intermediaries.
The partners say the combination addresses two long-standing bottlenecks for institutions: a lack of regulated secondary market liquidity and the absence of a seamless route from traditional asset custody to on-chain distribution.
Tokenization Market Looks for Institutional Rails
The agreement comes as tokenization moves from pilots into live financial infrastructure, with the value of real-world assets issued on-chain rising from around $5 billion in 2022 to more than $24 billion by mid-2025 and estimates above $38 billion by year-end, while tokenized assets, including stablecoins, now exceed $330 billion in value.
“Institutional investors have rightly waited for tokenization infrastructure that meets their governance and compliance standards,” said AMINA’s chief product officer, Myles Harrison. By partnering with 21X and building on its work with Tokeny, AMINA has assembled “the complete infrastructure – from banking custody of underlying assets through to on-chain issuance and exchange trading,” he added.
AMINA, Tokeny and 21X Develop EU’s DLT Pilot Market
AMINA’s move builds on its record as an early regulated crypto bank. Since receiving its license in 2019, the firm has expanded across Switzerland, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, and the EU via Austria and says it has maintained a zero-default lending track record over more than six years.
21X’s exchange went live in September 2025 as what it describes as the world’s first fully regulated blockchain-based trading and settlement venue for tokenized securities. It operates on the Polygon and Stellar networks and works with partners including Chainlink, Circle, and SBI Digital Markets.
By linking a FINMA-regulated crypto bank with a fully regulated DLT trading venue and its established technology partners, the tie-up packages custody, issuance, trading, and settlement into a single institutional offering.
For issuers and investors, that could mean faster time-to-market for tokenized bonds and funds, simpler cross-border distribution, and on-chain settlement that stays within familiar regulatory guardrails.
