Alex Batlin

Alex Batlin is a fintech and digital-assets executive best known for founding Trustology, an institutional crypto custody technology company. His career combines traditional financial technology with blockchain infrastructure, including senior innovation roles at UBS — where he led the FinTech Innovation Lab and the Crypto 2.0 Pathfinder programme — and at BNY Mellon, where he was Global Blockchain Lead. Trustology developed institutional custody infrastructure including TrustVault and was acquired by Bitpanda in 2022, becoming Bitpanda Custody. Batlin is not the current CEO of Trustology; the original company was acquired and integrated into Bitpanda’s custody business.

Founder Snapshot

1. About Alex Batlin

Alex Batlin is a fintech and digital-assets executive whose career spans traditional financial-services technology and blockchain infrastructure. Before entering the crypto custody sector, he held senior innovation and blockchain roles at two major financial institutions, UBS and BNY Mellon, where he worked on early enterprise blockchain research and initiatives. In 2017 he founded Trustology, a company focused on institutional digital-asset custody, which he led as CEO until its acquisition by Bitpanda in 2022. After the acquisition he became Managing Director of Bitpanda Custody and later a Non-Executive Director of Bitpanda. This profile focuses on his contribution to crypto, custody infrastructure and fintech, and keeps personal biography limited.

2. Traditional Finance & Blockchain Background

Before founding Trustology, Batlin spent over a decade inside major financial institutions working on fintech innovation and blockchain research.

UBS

At UBS, Batlin was the founding head of the bank’s FinTech Innovation Lab, based in the Level 39 fintech accelerator in London, and the founding head of UBS’s Crypto 2.0 Pathfinder research programme, an early internal investigation into blockchain and cryptoasset technology within a major bank. Public speaker biographies also credit him with co-founding Utility Settlement Coin, a multi-bank project exploring the issuance of digital cash on distributed ledgers, during his time at UBS. He later left UBS to join BNY Mellon.

BNY Mellon

At BNY Mellon, Batlin served as Global Head of Emerging Business & Technology and Global Blockchain Lead, with responsibility for the bank’s blockchain and emerging-technology strategy and research. He was quoted in the launch announcement of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance in that capacity. His move from UBS to BNY Mellon was reported in specialist blockchain media at the time.

Earlier roles in financial-services technology, including at other large institutions, are part of his broader career, but this profile focuses on the roles most relevant to understanding his fintech and blockchain trajectory.

3. Enterprise Ethereum Alliance & Industry Initiatives

Batlin was involved in several early enterprise blockchain consortium initiatives. His public speaker biographies state that he co-founded the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), the Utility Settlement Coin project, and the Trusted IoT consortia. The EEA’s official launch announcement quotes Batlin in his capacity as Global Head of Emerging Business and Technology at BNY Mellon, confirming his participating role in the initiative’s formation.

This profile distinguishes between founding or co-founding an initiative, participating in its formation, contributing through an employer, and serving as an industry member. Batlin did not create Ethereum, enterprise Ethereum, stablecoins or blockchain technology; his involvement was at the consortium and institutional-research level, often representing the bank he worked for at the time.

4. Trustology

Trustology was founded in 2017 by Alex Batlin as an institutional digital-asset custody company. Its purpose was to solve a core institutional problem: how organisations can securely hold and transact in digital assets while maintaining operational controls, security policies and compliance procedures. Trustology targeted regulated and professional clients — asset managers, exchanges, banks and other institutions — rather than individual retail users.

The company’s flagship product was TrustVault, a custodial wallet infrastructure designed for institutional workflows. Trustology also pursued regulatory approval in the United Kingdom, receiving full FCA cryptoasset registration in 2021. In February 2022, Bitpanda acquired Trustology for an undisclosed sum, and the business was rebranded and integrated as Bitpanda Custody. This profile does not exaggerate Trustology’s adoption, customer base or market position, and does not fabricate custody assets or assets under custody.

5. TrustVault

TrustVault was Trustology’s institutional custodial wallet product. It was designed to provide secure storage and controlled transaction capability for digital assets, with features aimed at institutional users: key management, transaction-authorisation workflows, segregation of duties, and integration with institutional compliance and operational processes.

Public materials described TrustVault as supporting multiple assets and offering connectivity to decentralised finance (DeFi) applications, allowing institutional clients to interact with DeFi protocols through controlled, policy-governed wallet infrastructure. This profile describes TrustVault’s intended design and does not claim that any security architecture is completely immune from compromise. Phrases such as “unhackable” or “zero risk” are not used, except when attributing a historical marketing statement.

6. FCA Registration

Trustology received temporary registration as a cryptoasset firm with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority in early 2021, followed by full registration as a cryptoasset firm in October 2021. The FCA’s cryptoasset registration regime is the UK’s anti-money-laundering / counter-terrorism-financing registration framework for cryptoasset businesses; it allows a registered firm to carry on certain cryptoasset activities in the UK.

FCA cryptoasset registration is not equivalent to bank authorisation, deposit insurance, investment approval, government endorsement, or a universal financial-services licence. It specifically concerns compliance with the MLRs 2017 cryptoasset provisions. Readers should consult the FCA’s public register for the formal status of any registered entity.

7. Bitpanda Acquisition

On 22 February 2022, Austrian investment platform Bitpanda announced the acquisition of Trustology for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition was Bitpanda’s first deal for a UK crypto custodian and was used to launch Bitpanda Custody, an institutional-grade custody service. The transaction was advised on by law firm Taylor Wessing on the Trustology side.

The corporate transition can be summarised as: Trustology → acquired by Bitpanda (Feb 2022) → Bitpanda Custody. Following the acquisition, Trustology ceased to operate as an independent brand and was integrated into Bitpanda’s institutional custody offering. This profile does not continue to present Trustology as an independent operating company after February 2022.

8. Bitpanda Custody

Following the acquisition, Alex Batlin became Managing Director of Bitpanda Custody, the institutional custody business built on the former Trustology technology. In that role he led the development of an insured and regulated custodial wallet offering for Bitpanda’s retail, institutional and white-label clients. Public statements from Bitpanda Custody during his tenure referenced integrations with institutional infrastructure partners.

His executive role at Bitpanda Custody was a post-acquisition position; he later moved to a Non-Executive Director position at Bitpanda. This profile does not describe him as the current Managing Director of Bitpanda Custody, because his executive role has since evolved into a non-executive board role.

What Is Alex Batlin Working on Now?

Information checked: August 2026

• Current: Non-Executive Director at Bitpanda — board oversight role at the parent company of Bitpanda Custody.
• Current: Board Advisor at Sumsub — a verification and compliance platform.
• Previous: Executive Advisor at Noda — October 2025 to April 2026.
• Previous: Managing Director, Bitpanda Custody — post-acquisition executive role.
• Previous: Founder & CEO, Trustology — 2017 to 2022 (acquired by Bitpanda).

This is an informational status check, not a verification badge.

Why Institutional Crypto Custody Matters

Institutional crypto custody addresses a set of operational problems that professional and regulated organisations face when holding digital assets: private-key management, transaction authorisation, segregation of duties, institutional governance, audit trails, operational security, regulatory compliance, access to multiple asset types, interaction with DeFi protocols, and settlement workflows. Unlike individual self-custody, institutional custody requires policy controls, multi-party approval, and integration with enterprise systems.

Trustology, through TrustVault, attempted to address these problems by building wallet and transaction infrastructure designed for institutional workflows. This section describes general custody concepts; it distinguishes them from technologies specifically created by Trustology, and does not imply that Trustology invented institutional custody as a category.

DeFi & Institutional Access

Batlin has publicly discussed institutional access to decentralised finance. His commentary has covered custodial access to decentralised applications, the security controls and compliance requirements that institutions need when interacting with DeFi, wallet integrations, and trading, lending and borrowing workflows. Trustology’s materials framed TrustVault as a way for institutions to reach DeFi through policy-governed infrastructure.

This profile attributes opinions to Batlin where appropriate (“Batlin argued…”, “Batlin described…”) and does not present predictions he made about DeFi as established facts.

What Happened to Trustology?

Trustology was founded in 2017 as an independent institutional digital-asset custody company. It was acquired by Bitpanda in February 2022 and rebranded as Bitpanda Custody. The original Trustology brand no longer operates as an independent company; its technology and business were integrated into Bitpanda’s institutional custody offering. This section is included to prevent the assumption that the original Trustology brand continues unchanged today.

Why Alex Batlin Matters in Crypto

Alex Batlin’s relevance in crypto comes from the intersection of traditional financial infrastructure, blockchain, institutional custody and wallet security. His career is a useful case study in how crypto infrastructure evolved from experimental blockchain research inside major banks toward regulated institutional digital-asset custody. Through Trustology and its transition into Bitpanda Custody, he contributed to building custody infrastructure aimed at professional and regulated organisations.

This profile does not describe him as a founder of Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain or cryptography. His founding roles relate to specific companies and consortium initiatives (Trustology, and, per his public biographies, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, Utility Settlement Coin and Trusted IoT), not to the underlying technologies themselves.