Digital Assets is a broad term that encompasses anything minted and exchanged on a blockchain, such as Stablecoins (e.g. USDC), Cryptocurrencies (e.g. Bitcoin), Central Bank Digital Currencies or CBDCs, Non-fungible Tokens or NFTs (e.g. Bored Ape).

Fiat assets represent traditional money that have been declared as legal tender. Fiat money is issued and managed by a country’s government e.g. the US dollar, the euro, the British pound

With a current market cap of $900B, Digital Assets support multiple real life use cases today, from Banking to Payments to Identity. As the technology, ecosystem and adoption is growing, so are the number of use cases.

All Digital Assets are technically stored in accounts on the Blockchains. Private keys for these accounts allow you to access and transfer the assets. There are 2 different approaches to managing these keys.
1. Non-custodial – You can store your private keys in safe place like a Ledger device and access your funds via 3rd party apps such as Metamask.
2. Custodial – You can also delegate the responsibility to custodians, such as Anchorage Digital Bank and Fortress Trust who will hold these assets for you and manage the deposit/ withdrawal of these assets.

Please note that Layer2 only supports Custodial storage, via its Qualified Custody partners, Anchorage Digital Bank and Fortress Trust.

You can acquire Digital Assets via exchanges, either decentralized exchanges like Uniswap or centralized exchanges/ Liquidity partners like Coinbase or Circle.
1. Decentralized – A decentralized exchange (DEX) allows users to buy crypto through direct, peer-to-peer cryptocurrency transactions, all over a online platform without an intermediary.
2. Centralized – A centralized exchange (CEX) facilitates the buying and selling of cryptocurrency, either for fiat currencies, like the US dollar, or between digital assets, like BTC and ETH. They function as trusted intermediaries in trades

Please note that Layer2 is currently only integrated to licensed Centralized exchanges and liquidity partners, in the different jurisdictions that we operate in.

Layer2 Financial is a Crypto Banking as a Service platform that simplifies the complex crypto ecosystem, and enables Fintechs, Neobank and Banks to offer safe and compliant Crypto Products such as Buy/ Sell/ Hold, Payments, Yield within days (75% faster than other infrastructure providers).

We do this by providing Financial Institutions a single easy to use API to integrate with, while we take on the heavy lifting of integrating with various Crypto and FIAT partners, such as Qualified Custody, Trading, Lending, Banks, Payment Rails, Crypto networks. These various endpoints are stitched together via an integrated omnibus ledger, automation, crypto capabilities to construct easy to use, fully compliant financial products.

You just need your customers, a user interface to offer the services and your existing support channels. We take care of everything else including accounting, customer onboarding, FIAT/ crypto money movement, blockchain operations such as gas management, compliance, KYC/KYB, AML/ fraud monitoring, integration with regulated partners such as banks/trusts, qualified custodians, exchanges and lending facilities.

Bitcoin is a consensus network that enables a new payment system and a completely digital money. It is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that is powered by its users with no central authority or middlemen. From a user perspective, Bitcoin is pretty much like cash for the Internet. Bitcoin can also be seen as the most prominent triple entry bookkeeping system in existence.

Yes, you can use Layer2 for your own institutional needs. You can use our APIs to integrate this directly with your internal applications.

You can use Layer2 APIs and Management UI if you are an accredited individual. However, we cannot support use of our APIs directly for non-accredited individuals.

We currently support over 20+ and growing list of stablecoins, cryptocurrencies today and continue to add more tokens and blockchains. We, along with our custody, exchange partners have a thorough selection process for adding new digital asset support. Click here for a full list of supported Digital Assets.

Services have to be provided by a regulated entity. However, we provide a “sponsor bank model” for non-regulated entities. In this case, your customers are technically customers of the regulated entities. In the sponsor bank model, we, along with our partners would take on the compliance burden (e.g. KYC, KYB). This model greatly reduces the compliance and operations burden on the fintech.

Your customers will use your web, mobile app to conduct all their transactions and see their balances.  We are also building Web and Mobile SDKs that you will be able to embed into your own experience.

Yes we have a management UI that we are rolling out to clients and regulated partners.

Typical integration takes 4 weeks. We have seen it done in 3 and as long as 10. It really depends on how fast your engineers can integrate with our APIs and legal can you review the contracts.

In order to maintain a coherent end user experience, we typically don’t interact with the end users. You will have to provide the support using your existing processes and channels. If we are providing. the “sponsor bank” model, then we may need to reach out to the end users directly for any compliance related issues.

Crypto funds are not insured like fiat based deposits by FDIC (USA) and CDIC (Canada)

Layer2 Financial is subject to regulation as a money transmitter in the USA and a money service business in Canada.  USA regulators and examiners include FinCeN and each licensed state examination team.  FINTRAC regulated the Canadian operations.

Tokenization is the process of representing a digital or real world asset, as a token that lives on a blockchain. It is used to increase the transferability of assets; increasing speed, reducing cost and unlocking liquidity.