Nomura invests in Ethereum money market protocol

Japan-based banking giant Nomura has announced that its digital assets subsidiary, Laser Digital, has made a strategic investment in Infinity, a non-custodial interest rate protocol built on Ethereum. Infinity’s wholesale exchange provides inter-exchange clearing, fixed and floating rate markets, as well as enterprise-grade risk management. The money market exchange protocol was founded by ex-Morgan Stanley Head of Structuring, Kevin Lepsoe. Olivier Dang, Head of Ventures at Laser Digital, stated that Infinity is building critical infrastructure for DeFi, and its protocol enabling price discovery and management of risk within DeFi is transformative for institutions. Laser Digital was recently unveiled by Nomura to spearhead its digital asset ambitions and is headquartered in Switzerland.

The investment comes as the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) published guidelines for crypto exposures in December 2022, with bank-prescribed risk weightings for tokenized assets to be treated on par 1:1 with their analog counterparts. The guidelines for banks come into effect on 1 January 2025. With USD $300 trillion of credit securities outstanding and multiples of that in the loan, derivative, and equity markets, the new guidelines portend a major wave of tokenization across financial and real assets. Infinity’s mainnet is scheduled to launch by the end of Q2 2023.