DEUTSCHE BANK GETS BAFIN CUSTODY LICENSE — THE BANK HOLDS THE KEYS — NO WORD ON SENDING COINS TO A CLIENT’S OWN WALLET

On October 12, 2026, Germany's financial regulator BaFin put Deutsche Bank on the EU's public list of licensed crypto firms. The entry covers two services and only two: holding crypto for clients, and moving it for them. It does not cover buying, selling or swapping it. The bank says bitcoin and ether come first.

Read the bank's own words from its September 16 release. "Whoever controls the private key controls the asset." Then: "Deutsche Bank will manage the wallets and private keys on clients' behalf." So the bank controls the asset. That is the product. The client holds the bank's promise, not a key.

The release says clients can "transfer them to third parties." It never says a client can send coins to a wallet the client holds the keys to. A coin that can only leave to someone else's account is a coin that can be frozen in one place. A bank that holds the keys is a bank that can be told to use them.

Cointelegraph, citing Reuters, says the bank wants to bring this to Asian financial centers in 2027. Every new office is one more government that can ask for the keys. If you want a bitcoin no one can freeze, hold the key yourself. At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $81,667.