Geneva, Switzerland, 17.09.2024–Taurus is pleased to announce its collaboration with Bank Syz to successfully tokenize a work of art from the Syz collection, “Dreamstime” by Sarah Benslimane. Thanks to the Taurus-CAPITAL tokenization solution, Bank Syz issued security tokens representing the ownership of the artwork on the Ethereum blockchain.  

Enhancing digital asset offerings for Bank Syz 

Bank Syz tokenized the artwork "Dreamstime" by Sarah Benslimane, distributing the tokens to its employees. They now collectively own the artwork and have the possibility to buy and sell the tokens on the TDX marketplace.  

The internal program, under the supervision of the Swiss law firm Schellenberg Wittmer, provides valuable learnings that will inform the bank's future digital asset offerings. With Syz Crypto offering, the Bank has been developing its existing cryptocurrency trading and custody services and hopes to one day integrate that art tokenization offering. This expansion would create new opportunities for clients to diversify their portfolios and engage with the art market in new ways. 

Broadening access to art ownership 

The primary motivation behind this initiative was to explore the benefits of tokenization in wealth management. Tokenization offers new possibilities for legacy planning by allowing fractional inheritance of real assets, simplifying estate distribution, and reducing conflicts. It democratizes access to traditionally exclusive assets, enabling a wider audience to invest in valuable items like art, real estate, and infrastructure.  

Nicolas Syz, Head of Private Bank at Bank Syz said: "This project not only enables our employees to engage with art in a novel way but also allows us to explore the vast potential of blockchain technology in wealth management. We are excited about the learnings gained from this initial tokenization of a real asset and how they could potentially shape our future offerings." 

Increased liquidity in the art market 

The Syz Art Tokens are registered in a co-ownership register maintained on the TDX platform. Those ledger-based securities ensure accurate tracking in real-time of the wallets to which the tokens are attributed. The tokens are also admitted for trading on TDX, providing a seamless and transparent trading experience. 

Sébastien Dessimoz, Managing Partner at Taurus, said: "Our collaboration with Bank Syz demonstrates the potential of tokenization to enhance art ownership. We are proud to provide the technology that makes such innovative projects possible as well as creating a secondary market through TDX to democratize access to art as an asset class."

About Syz Group 

The Syz Group is a family owned and managed Swiss financial group focused on excellent long-term investment performance, robust risk management, and personal service for clients. Descending from a family that have been entrepreneurs for centuries, the group was co-founded in 1996 by Eric Syz who still leads the firm alongside his two sons and a team of industry experts. Stable and secure – the Syz Group holds substantial equity, at around double Switzerland’s regulatory requirements. 

The group serves clients across three main areas: 

• Bank Syz offers private clients and external asset managers a genuine alternative to the traditions of Swiss private banking 

• Syz Capital offers investors the opportunity to invest alongside the Syz family in hard to access alternative investments such as private markets 

• Syz Asset Management primarily invests the assets of Swiss institutional investors in bonds and money market instruments. 

Syz clients share the group’s long-term view and focus on building sustainable wealth for the future. 

For more information, please visit: Syzgroup.com 

About Taurus SA 

Taurus SA is a Swiss Fintech, founded in April 2018, that provides enterprise-grade digital asset infrastructure to issue, custody, and trade any digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, tokenized assets, NFTs, and digital currencies. Taurus is a global leader in the banking segment, entrusted by the full spectrum of financial institutions: systemic banks, universal banks, online banks, crypto-banks, private banks, and broker-dealers. Taurus also operates a marketplace for private assets and tokenized securities. Taurus SA is a securities firm supervised and regulated by FINMA. TDX is an organized trading facility operated by Taurus.   

About Taurus’ platform and products  

Depending on their business model, strategy, and risk tolerance, Taurus' clients can seamlessly manage cryptocurrencies including staking, digitize and tokenize any type of asset on any standard end-to-end, and process digital currencies of their choice. Taurus’ product portfolio is composed of  Taurus-PROTECT™, the leading secure storage solution in Europe which is currently used by more than 30 financial institutions and corporations. Taurus-CAPITAL™ allows clients to issue and manage tokenized assets on public and permissionned blockchains, as well as interact with any smart contract. The regulated marketplace for digital assets, TDX™, is connected to Taurus-PROTECT™ and Taurus-CAPITAL™. All products leverage Taurus’ blockchain node infrastructure, Taurus-EXPLORER™, which provides a unified API and reliable broadcasting algorithms to interface securely with blockchain networks.  

For more information, please visit: www.taurushq.com  

For more information, please visit: www.t-dx.com