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Alex Batilin

Alex Batlin is an institutional finance veteran who moved into blockchain: after the crypto labs of UBS and BNY Mellon he founded Trustology, an institutional custody platform acquired by Bitpanda in 2022 and renamed Bitpanda Custody. Today he holds advisory and non-executive director roles.

Riccardo CuratoloBy Riccardo Curatolo 2 min read How we work
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Who he is

Alex Batlin is a London-based entrepreneur and executive with more than twenty-five years of experience across banks and emerging technologies. At UBS he founded the FinTech Innovation Lab dedicated to blockchain in London's Level39 accelerator; at BNY Mellon he was Blockchain Lead and founder of the Emerging Business & Technology team. He co-founded industry initiatives that made enterprise blockchain history: Utility Settlement Coin (the interbank settlement currency project later folded into Fnality), the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and the Trusted IoT consortium. In 2017-2018 he founded Trustology, among the pioneers of institutional crypto-asset custody with FCA registration in the United Kingdom, leading it up to its acquisition by the Austrian Bitpanda group in 2022, when the company became Bitpanda Custody.

Current role

Trustology no longer exists as an independent company: it was acquired by Bitpanda in February 2022 and renamed Bitpanda Custody. (Verified: September 2026)

After the acquisition Batlin led Bitpanda Custody as Managing Director; today he presents himself as a non-executive director and board advisor, with advisory appointments for fintech and digital-asset companies (including Bitpanda, Sumsub and Noda, where he appears as Executive Advisor). Public sources (LinkedIn, conference profiles) indicate advisory roles but no up-to-date executive title.

Career path

  • 2010s — Leads the first blockchain labs at UBS (Level39) and then at BNY Mellon; co-founds Utility Settlement Coin, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and Trusted IoT; included in the FinTech Finance35 and FinTech 40 lists (2016).
  • 2017-2022 — Founds and leads Trustology, an institutional crypto-asset custodian registered with the FCA.
  • 2022-today — Bitpanda acquires Trustology (renamed Bitpanda Custody); Batlin moves from Managing Director to board and advisory roles in the custody and digital asset sector.

Recent developments and controversies

  • Trustology acquisition (Verified: September 2026): completed in early 2022, it gave Bitpanda an institutional custody arm in the United Kingdom (Bitpanda Custody Ltd, still active and FCA-registered). Linked to the affair is a 2022 FCA rebuke over the group's communications about the scope of the registration: a matter of regulatory communication, with no known sanctions against Batlin.
  • There are no personal legal controversies against him.

FAQ

Is Alex Batlin still CEO of Trustology? No: Trustology was acquired by Bitpanda in 2022 and became Bitpanda Custody. Batlin was its Managing Director after the acquisition and today holds non-executive director and advisory roles. (Verified: September 2026)

What was Utility Settlement Coin? An interbank project co-founded by Batlin during his UBS years to create a settlement currency between financial institutions on blockchain; the initiative later merged into the Fnality consortium.

See also

Verified sources

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