Standard Chartered named OKX’s Institutional Custodian in the EEA

Standard Chartered, a major global banking group, is deepening its relationship with Cryptocurrency Exchange OKX, which has become the institutional custodian in the European Economic Area (EEA).

Standard Chartered and OKX have launched a collateral mirroring program in the EEA, allowing local institutional clients to keep their crypto directly in the custody of Chartered, OKX announced on Wednesday.

The launch marks an expansion of a Pilot was first launched in Dubai in April, which aims to enable institutions to maintain their assets with a globally systemically important bank (G-SIB) while mirroring balances on the OKX for trading.

The expansion of the program in the EEA reinforces OKX’s commitment to Europe after the The Exchange has obtained a Maltese license under Europe Markets in Crypto-Assets (MICA) Framework in early 2025.

How does the program work?

Before the deal with Standard Chartered, OKX’s institutional clients mostly kept their crypto on the exchange, with fiat transactions handled through regular bank partners.

While OKX’s default custody option is the in-house solution, the exchange also allows institutions to use third-party custodians, including copper or Komainu, if they prefer to hold assets off-exchange.

With the integration of Standard Chartered, OKX’s institutional clients can hold their assets directly with a major regulated bank, while OKX can mirror those assets back to its trading system.

Growing confidence following the October flash crash

OKX’s partnership with Standard Chartered is crucial for growing confidence in the crypto ecosystem amid market turmoil in October, with exchanges Suffering $ 20 billion liquid on Friday.

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, has faced a massive controversy since the crash, which featured Vulnerability of its price oracles and blaming the platform for investor losses worth millions of dollars.

Related: Centralized exchanges face claims of massive undercounts

“Recent events have reignited the ‘Wild West’ narrative around crypto, but partnerships like ours with a common charter show how far the industry has come,” OKX Europe CEO Erd Ghoos told Cointelegraph.

“We are proud to be working on the first and only G-Sib directly integrated into a crypto exchange, proving that regulated, secure and transparent models are the future of digital assets,” he said.