Komainu — institutional digital-asset custody specialist

Wiki route

This entry sits under exchanges index. Read it with FSA crypto-asset exchange registration system — number system / Local Finance Bureau jurisdiction / registration requirements for adjacent context and Japan Financial Regulation — Legal Framework for Tokens, Crypto Assets, and Payments for the broader system boundary.

Jersey FSC registration (2019) · UK FCA Crypto registration (2025) · VARA (Dubai) registration (2023) · no Japan base / not registered with Japan FSA

1. Corporation / shareholders

• Trade name: Komainu Holdings Limited (English) / Komainu (katakana common name)
• Established: 2018 年 (Jersey, Channel Islands)
• Head-office location: Jersey (a British Crown Dependency)
• Form of establishment: founded as a three-party joint venture (Joint Venture) of Nomura Holdings, CoinShares, and Ledger
• Current major shareholders (disclosed portion): as of 2025年 1 月, Blockstream led a Series B as a strategic investor. Laser Digital (Nomura’s digital-asset subsidiary) continues to participate on the Board. CoinShares and Ledger are investors from the time of founding.
• Unlisted (no information on listing on a public stock market)

2. License / registration status

This table is limited to Komainu’s current entity-level regulatory disclosures and official history. The FCA registration belongs to Komainu UK, JFSC regulation to Komainu (Jersey), and the VARA license to Komainu MEA; none is a group-wide license. ^[Sources: https://komainu.com/entities/; https://komainu.com/about/.]

• Japan FSA crypto-asset exchange business: not registered
• JVCEA membership: not a member
• Within Japan, there is no registration with the Financial Services Agency / Local Finance Bureaus. There is also no disclosure of information on the establishment of a Japanese corporation.

3. Handled assets (custody targets)

A specific list of brand names is not disclosed on the official site (as a custody specialist, there is no list of brand names like an exchange).

• The official site presents institutional multi-asset custody and staking but does not publish a fixed list of supported assets
• Custodial staking lets clients earn on-chain rewards while assets remain in custody
• Komainu Connect (from 2023) covers trading, collateral use, borrowing, and lending
• As reviewed in July 2026, Komainu CORE is listed as a current collateral-as-a-service offering; the official page does not state a launch month

4. Business scope

The company’s offered services are the 4 pillars of custody-first (centered on custody):

1. Custody (safekeeping): cold custody utilizing MPC (Multi-Party Computation) + HSM (Hardware Security Module) wallet technology. Independently verifiable on-chain segregated management.
2. Custodial Staking: an institutional service that earns on-chain rewards while keeping assets in custody.
3. Komainu Connect (collateral management): infrastructure that allows assets in custody to be used as collateral for trading, borrowing, and lending. Started in 2023 and connects with exchanges including OKX.
4. Komainu CORE: a Collateral-as-a-Service solution that enables digital assets to function as regulated collateral. It was listed on the official site when reviewed in July 2026, but no launch month was stated.

Retail services such as fiat-currency deposit channels are not provided (pure institutional infrastructure).

5. Market position / customer base

• Target: institutional investors / financial institutions / sovereign nations / government-affiliated funds
• Disclosed service integration:
  • Komainu Connect: the official history records the service’s 2023 launch and exchange connectivity. This entry does not infer individual customer names or contract sizes
• Competitive comparison: competes with institutional-custody providers such as Anchorage Digital, Fireblocks, and BitGo (see Global institutional custody five pillars — Coinbase Custody / Fidelity / Anchorage / BitGo / Komainu). The company’s differentiation points are multi-regulatory compliance across Jersey / UK FCA / VARA + affinity with the Nomura group.
• Number of accounts / AUM in custody: not disclosed

6. History / major incidents

This chronology includes only milestones stated by Komainu’s official About and current service pages. Items supported only by reporting, yen conversions, and launch months not stated in official materials are excluded. ^[Sources: https://komainu.com/about/; https://komainu.com/services/komainu-core/.]

• Within the designated official and regulatory sources reviewed on 2026-07-29, no administrative action, hack, or major outage record was identified; this is not an assertion that none exists

7. Strategic developments (most recent 12 months)

• Blockstream Series B (2025): the official history records a $75 million Series B and Blockstream’s strategic participation. This entry does not infer allocation to particular uses or assets.
• Expansion across regulated jurisdictions (2025): the official history records UK FCA and Italy OAM registrations. Actual service availability must be checked for the contracting entity and applicable jurisdiction.
• Komainu CORE: listed on the official site as regulated collateral-as-a-service when reviewed in July 2026. Its start date and future product scope are not inferred beyond the published materials.
• Japan expansion: within the Komainu entity and regulatory materials designated for this review and checked on 2026-07-29, no disclosure of a Japanese entity, Japan FSA registration, or launch of a Japan-targeted service was identified. This is not an assertion that none exists, and a Nomura group connection alone is not treated as evidence of Japan expansion.

8. Management

Board of Directors (disclosed portion):

• Adam Back (Blockstream Corporation / CEO)
• Steve Ashley (Laser Digital / Co-CEO)
• PeterPaul Pardi (Blockstream Capital Partners)
• Jez Mohideen (Laser Digital / Co-CEO)
• Paul Frost-Smith (Komainu)
• Nicolas Brand (Blockstream Capital Partners)

Related

• jp-exchange-laser-digital-japan — Nomura group’s digital-asset investment / management subsidiary (shares a Board with Komainu)
• jp-exchange-crypto-garage — another Japan-oriented digital-asset corporation in which Nomura HD invests
• jp-custody-ginco — a domestic Japanese institutional-custody comparison target
• japan-financial-regulation — Japanese financial regulation overall
• global-institutional-custody-five-pillars — global institutional custody 5 pillars
• uae-vara-licensing-overview — UAE VARA license system (Komainu Dubai base)
• jp-institutional-custody-three-pillars — JP institutional custody three pillars

Sources

• Komainu About Us (retrieved 2026-05-19)
• Komainu Services (retrieved 2026-05-19)
• Komainu official site TOP (retrieved 2026-05-19)
• Komainu Entities (retrieved 2026-07-29)
• Komainu CORE (retrieved 2026-07-29)
• CoinPost “Komainu” search results (retrieved 2026-05-19) — series of articles on the custodian Komainu established by Nomura HD and others (2020-2026 年)
• CoinPost — Komainu $75M Series B Blockstream report (retrieved 2026-05-19, article title “Komainu, established by Nomura HD and others, raises approximately 116 億円 in Bitcoin” 2025-01-17)
• CoinPost — Propine acquisition report (retrieved 2026-05-19, article title “Komainu, in which Nomura invests, acquires the Singapore custody company Propine” 2024-10-23)