Yesterday, Laser Digital, Nomura’s Swiss digital asset business, announced that it will acquire Elysium Technology Group. Elysium is an established provider of post-trade solutions for over-the-counter currency markets and, more recently, digital assets.

The goal is to apply Elysium’s expertise to the digital asset sector, but will continue to grow its FX product lines.

Elysium CEO Ed Mount spent the early years of his career at UBS and a year running Nomura’s Global eFX Trading in 2015 before rejoining Elysium.

Laser Digital highlighted Elysium and MatchHub’s RiskDB workflow solution, which enables transaction matching, clearing and settlement.

“The acquisition of Elysium is a strategic move that aligns perfectly with our vision for the future of finance,” said Steve Ashley, CEO of Laser Digital. “Combining Laser Digital with Elysium’s RiskDB and MatchHub platforms will allow us to offer the cross-asset post-trade system institutional digital asset investors require.”

Elysium is not the first FX platform to get involved with digital assets. CobaltFX, backed by Standard Chartered, used blockchain-inspired concepts for its FX middle office solution and expanded into digital assets as well.

On a general level, the convergence of FX and digital assets is in the cards, even if it takes time. Multiple trials have used DeFi automated market makers to trade tokenized currencies, including central bank digital currency (CBDC) and deposit tokens.

Meanwhile, Laser Digital has five other investments in its portfolio. Prior to the formation of Laser, Nomura invested in Komainu, a digital asset custody joint venture with Coinshares and Ledger. Nomura also backed AllInfra, a climate and tokenization startup.

More recently, Laser has invested in DeFi market making technology platform Orderly, which takes a more conventional order book approach to market making versus simplistic DeFi algorithms that often result in wide spreads. He also endorsed ClearToken, which is creating a central counterparty to reduce risk, and Crossover Markes, an institution-only crypto execution network.