If cash is no longer cash, where do you keep it?
Enter Suhanna Husein, Co-Founder and CEO of CoKeeps, the first licensed digital asset custodian in Malaysia. “We’re building a vault for the digital age,” she said. “Because digital assets need digital protection. Physical solution such as airgapping does not make sense as digital assets are operating on the internet “
Air-gapping – isolating a computer system or network from other networks, especially the internet.
From Coins to Code: Understanding the Evolution of Money
To understand what CoKeeps does, we first need to know how money has evolved. Money began as something physical—coins, notes, even gold bars stored in vaults. Eventually, it became numbers on a screen. Most of us now operate in a cashless world, where value is stored in digital bank accounts and accessed through mobile apps.
But even that system still relies on a trusted middleman – banks.
Now imagine a form of money that doesn’t sit in a bank. It lives entirely on the internet. The government doesn’t issue it. A bank teller doesn’t store it. It’s held directly by you, through a blockchain-based wallet secured not by a PIN or an IC, but by something called a private key.
This is digital money in its purest form: cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, tokenised shares, smart contracts, and digital documents of value. And while this system allows for greater ownership and autonomy, it comes with one major catch.
“If you lose your private key, there’s no reset button. Your money is gone. If someone steals it, they can take everything; no one can get it back for you,” Suhanna explained.
Why the World Needs Digital Custodians
This is why custodianship exists in the digital asset world. It’s a service designed to protect digital value just like bank vaults protect physical money, only reimagined for an internet-native world.
“We don’t deal with physical cash,” Suhanna said. “We safeguard digital value. Value that lives on blockchains and needs new rules, new protection, and new infrastructure.”
Most digital asset thefts happen not because the blockchain was hacked, but because private keys were stolen or mismanaged. That’s why the phrase “Not your keys, not your coins” became so popular in crypto circles.
But CoKeeps flips the problem on its head, instead of expecting users to manage their private keys, it removes that single point of failure altogether. Using proprietary technology, CoKeeps builds secure digital vaults that eliminate the need for storage of private keys.
Understanding Wallet Infrastructure
To help people understand how digital storage works, Suhanna offers a simple metaphor:
“Hot wallets are like ATMs—always online, easy to access, but not where you keep everything. Cold wallets are like bank vaults—secure, protected behind multiple layers of verification and authentication.”
Crypto exchanges, for instance, store large amounts of user funds in hot wallets, making them prime targets for hackers. At CoKeeps, cold wallet storage is prioritised, with multiple safeguards and offline protection.
More importantly, CoKeeps adds governance structure to the way digital value is accessed and controlled.
In traditional finance, a business banking account usually has multiple signatories. One person prepares a payment, another approves it. This maker-checker system is vital for accountability.
CoKeeps brings the same principle into the digital asset world through multi-signature wallets – digital vaults that require more than one party to authorise a transaction. This prevents both external hacks and internal misuse, providing companies with the same level of security and governance they expect from a traditional bank without relying on outdated infrastructure.
From Oil and Gas to Digital Assets
Suhanna’s journey into this space didn’t start in fintech. A Petronas scholar from Sabah, she studied mechanical engineering and finance at the University of Southern California. After a short stint at Groupon Malaysia, she returned to serve in Petronas, where she spent six years as a technologist evaluating new technologies for industry adoption.
That role opened her eyes to blockchain not just as a technology, but as a social movement.
“It’s not just about decentralisation. It’s about designing financial systems that are fairer, inclusive, and built for the digital age,” she said.
When Malaysia’s Securities Commission introduced regulations for digital assets in 2020, including rules for Digital Asset custodians (DAC) and Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) , Suhanna and her co-founders seized the opportunity. They applied for registration and began building CoKeeps.
In October 2023, CoKeeps became the first digital asset custodian in Malaysia to receive full approval from the Securities Commission. “It took almost two years. But we knew the market needed secure, compliant institutional-grade infrastructure to build real trust in digital assets,” she said.
Building Infrastructure for Digital Ownership
CoKeeps works with licensed financial institutions, blockchain projects, trustees, fund managers, and high-net-worth individuals. They also support estate planning ensuring digital assets can be passed on securely when a person dies.
“People don’t think about what happens to their crypto if something happens to them. That’s where we come in, working with partners like banks to offer a full suite of asset class for estate planning,” Suhanna said.
CoKeeps also allows clients to generate yield on assets through staking, a process akin to earning returns through fixed deposits but designed for the blockchain network. With the proper structure, even this can be made Shariah-compliant, Suhanna informed.
And they’re making it easy. Clients can mint their tokens, fractionalise digital ownership, and launch blockchain projects through CoKeeps. “We handle the backend. You focus on economics,” Suhanna said.
Malaysia’s Digital Vault
Despite the technical depth, CoKeeps operates on a simple principle: if money has gone digital, then so must the vault.
“Digital assets need digital solutions,” Suhanna said. “It doesn’t make sense to secure something digital using outdated, physical-world methods. Our job is to make sure that when you wake up tomorrow, your digital value is still there and protected.”
And in a world where intangible assets are quickly overtaking physical ones, from cryptocurrencies to intellectual property, share certificates to sensitive documents, that vault is more relevant than ever.
“We see ourselves as a startup, yes. But our role is foundational,” Suhanna said. “We’re not just reacting to the industry, we’re building what it needs to survive and grow.”
Because in the future of finance, it’s not just about having digital money. It’s about knowing where and how to keep it safe.
