Plume just collected two regulatory stamps in quick succession: a US SEC transfer agent registration and a Class M Digital Asset Business Licence from the Bermuda Monetary Authority. The dual-jurisdiction approach signals a platform serious about courting institutional money.

The Bermuda licence was secured through Kimber Digital Assets Bermuda ISAC Ltd, a subsidiary of Kimber Labs Inc., the company behind Plume. Under Bermuda’s Digital Asset Business Act 2018, KDAB now holds the distinction of being the first regulated onchain vault manager operating within the island nation’s legal framework.

What the licence actually means

Bermuda’s DABA has been on the books since 2018, making it one of the more seasoned regulatory frameworks for digital assets globally. A Class M licence specifically authorizes digital asset business operations under that framework.

The “first regulated” claim matters because the tokenization space has been crowded with platforms promising institutional-grade infrastructure while operating in regulatory gray zones. Having a licence from a recognized monetary authority, rather than just a legal opinion from a friendly law firm, is a meaningful differentiator when you’re trying to convince pension funds and family offices to park capital on your platform.

The SEC transfer agent piece

The Bermuda licence is only half the regulatory puzzle. Plume’s registration as a transfer agent with the US Securities and Exchange Commission bridges a gap that most crypto-native platforms haven’t bothered to cross.

Transfer agents maintain records of who owns what, process transfers, and handle the administrative machinery that keeps securities markets functional. In traditional finance, companies like Computershare and Equiniti handle this work for publicly traded stocks. Plume applying this role to tokenized assets is a deliberate move to position itself within existing US securities infrastructure rather than outside it.

By registering as a transfer agent, Plume is essentially saying: yes, some of these assets are securities, and we’re prepared to handle them within that regulatory reality.

Why institutions care about regulated vaults

Institutional allocators, the endowments, sovereign wealth funds, and pension systems that move the largest pools of capital, have regulatory obligations of their own. They need the entity holding their assets to be licensed, audited, and operating under a recognized legal framework.

That’s the gap Plume is targeting with its “regulated onchain vault manager” positioning. The vaults are designed to hold institutional assets like private equity and RWAs within a structure that satisfies both blockchain-native requirements and traditional regulatory expectations.