Plume secures digital asset business licence from Bermuda Monetary Authority

Getting one regulatory stamp of approval in crypto is hard enough. Plume just grabbed two, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, in what amounts to a pincer movement on the compliance problem that has plagued tokenized real-world assets for years.

Plume’s subsidiary, Kimber Digital Assets Bermuda ISAC Ltd. (KDAB), has obtained a Class M Digital Asset Business Licence from the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA). Separately, Plume has registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission as a transfer agent. Together, these moves position the platform as a regulated bridge between traditional capital markets and decentralized finance.

What the Bermuda licence actually means

The Class M licence falls under Bermuda’s Digital Asset Business Act 2018, one of the earliest and most structured regulatory frameworks for digital assets anywhere in the world.

For KDAB, the licence unlocks the ability to operate as a regulated onchain vault manager. In English: the subsidiary can now offer “regulated vaults” for tokenized institutional assets, meaning funds, securities, and other financial instruments that have been converted into blockchain-based tokens, all under formal compliance oversight.

The SEC transfer agent piece

Transfer agents are the unsexy plumbing of securities markets. They manage ownership records, process transactions, handle dividend distributions, and maintain shareholder registries. Every publicly traded company in the US has one. Without them, nobody would know who actually owns what.

For tokenized instruments, this role becomes critical. When a real-world asset, say a bond or a fund share, gets tokenized and lives on a blockchain, someone still needs to maintain the official record of ownership that the SEC recognizes. That someone is the transfer agent.

By registering as one, Plume isn’t just adding a compliance badge to its website. It’s inserting itself into the legal infrastructure that governs how securities change hands in the United States.

The dual registration creates something genuinely unusual. KDAB handles regulated custody and vault management in Bermuda. Plume’s transfer agent role handles ownership records and securities servicing under US law. Together, they form a compliance stack that spans two major jurisdictions.

Why this matters for the RWA sector

Plume’s approach tackles this from both ends. The Bermuda licence provides a regulated home for the custody and management of tokenized assets. The SEC registration provides the legal plumbing for those assets to be recognized and serviced within the US securities framework.

Market analysts have described Plume’s regulatory framework as a landmark for compliant RWA adoption. There aren’t many platforms that hold both a BMA digital asset licence and SEC transfer agent status simultaneously.