Monument Bank Delays £250 Million Deposit Tokenization Project

Monument Bank has postponed its £250 million (approximately $330 million) retail banking deposit tokenization project by several months due to the inability to find a local crypto custody provider that meets the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) standards and can handle zero-knowledge privacy proofs. The bank originally planned to tokenize customer deposits on the privacy-focused blockchain Midnight, expecting to launch to retail customers in November after an additional two months. To meet regulatory requirements, Monument Bank has expanded its search for custody partners to overseas and has found a Canadian custody institution approved by the FCA. Midnight is a privacy-first Layer 1 blockchain project funded by Charles Hoskinson, which keeps customer information within the Monument system through zero-knowledge proofs while allowing the bank to prove compliance on-chain and provide audit records to regulators. The project was announced in March this year, with plans to target investable assets ranging from £50,000 to £5 million.