Prime Trust
Prime Trust Technical Briefing
Published November 15, 2022
Supported by Modern Treasury , IowaEDA and Brale
Overview
Antonio Georgalis, principal solution engineer at Prime Trust, demos the Prime Trust regulated custody and liquidity platform — the API-driven back-end infrastructure that connects crypto to the US dollar financial system for fintechs. The platform covers KYC-gated account creation (/v2/accounts), settlement, cash and asset transfers, and a liquidity API (/v2/quotes) that converts between dollars and roughly eight to ten supported digital assets via a request-for-quote flow. Money-in rails include ACH pull, wire, debit card, and Signet; money-out covers ACH and wire disbursements. The demo walks through the liquidity quote lifecycle end-to-end: RFQ with a price and expiration, execute, and check settlement status. Prime Trust runs two settlement modes — instant (settle asynchronously within milliseconds of execution, default) and scheduled (execute first, move funds in later, settle end-of-day, similar to T+2 in traditional markets) — plus a hot vs. warm balance distinction for automated vs. operations-reviewed disbursements.
0:00 Introduction to Prime Trust — regulated crypto custody
Antonio Georgalis, principal solution engineer at Prime Trust, introduces Prime Trust — a regulated trust company acting as custodian to fintechs in the crypto industry. The API-driven platform connects crypto to the US dollar financial system for fully compliant money movement.
0:30 API overview — accounts, settlement, transfers, liquidity
Tour of the Prime Trust API surface: /v2/accounts for KYC-gated account creation, an internal settlement API for buying and selling trades between accounts, cash and asset transfer APIs, and the liquidity API at /v2/quotes for converting between USD and crypto.
2:30 On-ramps and off-ramps
Money and asset movement in and out of Prime Trust custodial accounts: external wallet deposits and withdrawals, ACH pull / wire / Signet / debit card for cash-in, and ACH / wire disbursements for cash-out. Plus direct-deposit instructions for payroll.
3:00 Demo app — buy and sell interface
Walk-through of a Prime Trust demo app built on the liquidity API — a dollar amount and a ticker produce an RFQ (request-for-quote) with a price, quantity, and expiration timer. Miss the window and the button disables.
4:30 Liquidity API in Postman — /v2/quotes
The /v2/quotes endpoint returns a quote ID; a follow-up call executes it. /v2/assets returns the list of supported asset IDs. The hot/warm flag controls whether a subsequent disbursement from the account requires operations review.
5:30 Warm vs hot balances — human-in-the-loop
Warm is the default — Prime Trust ops reviews every disbursement before it moves, on top of the standard account-owner email confirmation. Hot balances auto-disburse after owner confirmation, intended for stablecoin-in-the-loop flows.
6:30 Execute a quote and settlement status
POSTing to /v2/quotes/.../execute returns "executed pending settlement" — under Prime Trust's instant settlement (the default), the trade is actually settled within milliseconds in an asynchronous post-trade process with timestamps for created/executed/settled.
7:30 Specify base amount or target asset quantity
Quotes accept either a USD amount or an explicit asset quantity (Bitcoin to 8 decimals). Handy for "fill my payment in BTC" flows vs. "sell everything I have" flows.
8:30 Scheduled settlement for post-trade flows
Scheduled settlement works like T+2 in traditional markets — execute the quote first, move funds in afterwards during the day, settlement completes at end-of-day. Useful when a customer is wiring funds in and wants to lock a price before the wire clears.
Topics: Custody, Crypto Infrastructure, Compliance & Regulation
