Utila and Bermuda Partner to Enable Confidential Custody for Central Banks

Utila and Bermuda have partnered to provide central banks with infrastructure for conducting confidential and secure operations on shared blockchain ledgers. The collaboration combines Utila’s institutional custody platform, which keeps wallet keys within hardware security modules (HSMs) controlled by the institution, with Bermuda’s privacy layer, which enables transactions, balances and counterparties to remain confidential while still meeting regulatory and compliance requirements. The partnership addresses growing demand from central banks exploring tokenized financial markets, wholesale CBDCs and on-chain settlement.

The need for this infrastructure is increasing as central banks around the world move toward blockchain-based financial systems. Initiatives such as the Eurosystem’s Pontes and Appia, Singapore’s Global Layer One, Project Agorá and Switzerland’s Project Helvetia are demonstrating how tokenized assets and central bank money can operate on shared ledgers. However, public or shared networks create new challenges around protecting sensitive information, as transparent transactions could reveal monetary-policy operations, reserve movements, counterparties and trading strategies in real time. Utila and Bermuda aim to solve these issues by combining institution-controlled key security with cryptographic transaction privacy.

Under the partnership, Utila validates transactions against institutional policies before they are submitted, while Bermuda provides privacy for transactions executed on the ledger. Utila connects directly to HSMs such as Thales Luna, ensuring that wallet keys are generated and remain inside hardware controlled by the bank, while Bermuda enables shielded accounts, unlinkable transactions and selective disclosure for auditors and regulators. The companies say this architecture could allow central banks to conduct activities such as repo operations, tenders and reserve management on public infrastructure without exposing sensitive strategies, while maintaining the security and operational controls expected of traditional financial infrastructure.

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