Deutsche Börse and Commerzbank broke the news on Thursday that a brand new Frankfurt-based digital asset venture will be jointly launched. The venture, named 360x, is a collaboration between two of the biggest names in German finance to pool resources together. 

In the beginning, the focus of the venture will be on utilizing blockchain to tokenize art and real estate. A minimum viable product (MVP) is planned to follow later in the year. To achieve this goal, the partners are playing to each other’s strengths.

Deutsche Börse will serve as the market infrastructure operator, while Commerzbank is leading the way into the future of digital banking. The team is made up of fintech founders who will be working together to create the marketplaces of tomorrow. The team is hoping this will eventually generate new revenue potential. 

The project is to be led by CEO and founder, Carlos Kölzer. Kölzer previously started the FX company 360T which was acquired via a sale by Deutsche Börse in 2015 for around $800 million. 

With these two entities coming together, any platform they create will ostensibly be regulatory compliant and provide an orderly secondary market. A big feature of tokens is to take assets and fractionalize them. This allows for relatively small entry-level investments for clients. 

Deutsche Börse, as a partner, will create a level of faith and already serves this role for digital collateral registry platform HQLAX. Commerzbank, meanwhile, will fill the role as a payments partner.

Both Commerzbank and Deutsche Börse have a long history in enterprise blockchain and DLT. Each has also recently been involved in a trial to settle blockchain securities transactions. The TARGET2 real-time gross settlement system will be used in the trial by the German Bundesbank.