Significant Progress in Crypto Offerings

A status chart shared by River on August 8 tracks these banking giants’ positions in custody and trading services. The snapshot reveals many firms moving from “not yet” into “exploring,” “announced,” or offering restricted access for high-net-worth clients. This trend signals that digital assets are steadily integrating into mainstream wealth management and capital markets.

Concrete Moves by Leading Banks

Tangible actions since early 2024 illustrate this transformation. For example, Morgan Stanley is considering allowing its 15,000 brokers to recommend spot Bitcoin ETFs to clients, while working on suitability guardrails and allocation limits—indicating an expansion beyond unsolicited orders.

More recently, Charles Schwab’s CEO announced plans to enable customers to trade both Bitcoin and Ethereum, aiming to provide a unified platform where all holdings can be viewed and managed.

On the banking side, PNC went further by partnering with Coinbase so that wealth and asset management clients can trade crypto directly through their PNC accounts instead of a separate platform.

Advances in Custody and Tokenization

State Street announced plans to launch stablecoins and tokenize deposits to improve settlement efficiency, with subsequent initiatives expected to tokenize bonds and money market shares.

BNY Mellon frequently appears in filings and product developments, including roles as administrator and cash custodian in ETF documents. The bank has also recently served as custodian for reserves linked to Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin.

Next-Generation Financial Services and Pilot Projects

Citi has explored Solana for next-gen financial services and tokenization pilots, and reportedly considered custody services in early 2025.

JPMorgan launched several crypto-related projects in 2025. In June, it initiated a pilot for a tokenized deposit token issued on Base, aiming to enable instant dollar transfers.

The bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, revealed plans to test stablecoin services alongside the tokenized deposit pilot, though he has not retracted his previous criticisms of crypto.

Last week, JPMorgan enabled its customers to make direct crypto purchases via Coinbase without leaving their dashboard.

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Dominance Race in Crypto Custody Services Heats Up on Wall Street

The race for leadership in crypto custody services is accelerating on Wall Street, with financial giants rushing to offer services that were once off-limits. The latest to make their move are State Street and Citi, two of the world’s largest custodian banks.

State Street, managing $46.6 trillion in assets, and Citi, with $25 trillion in custody, have both announced plans to launch crypto custody services.

This move signifies a major shift in the industry, as years of regulatory barriers had kept major financial institutions on the sidelines.

Citi and State Street’s Crypto Custody Plans

According to a report by The Information, State Street plans to launch its crypto custody services by 2026.

The firm established a dedicated digital assets division in 2021 and briefly partnered with UK-based Copper for custody technology. However, regulatory uncertainty forced the firm to shelve its plans in 2023.

Meanwhile, Citi has been exploring blockchain-based initiatives. The bank previously collaborated with Singapore-based BondbloX for tokenized bond custody and worked with Metaco on digital asset custody; Metaco was later acquired by Ripple.

Citi’s crypto strategy had been quieter compared to its peers, but recent developments suggest the bank is now focused on the sector with renewed innovation.

The Repeal of SAB 121 Opens the Door for Banks

Wall Street’s shift toward crypto can largely be attributed to the recent repeal of SAB 121, a SEC rule that restricted banks from offering crypto custody services.

Introduced in 2022, SAB 121 effectively prevented traditional banks from entering the crypto custody market, while granting exceptions to select firms like BNY Mellon. Critics argued the rule stifled innovation and gave regulators excessive control over the market.

However, with the Trump administration’s repeal of SAB 121, banks are now free to participate in crypto custody, paving the way for giants like Citi and State Street to enter the sector.

A Pro-Crypto Shift on Wall Street

For years, banks had approached crypto cautiously, wary of regulatory scrutiny and reputational risks. But with the lifting of restrictions and growing institutional demand for secure digital asset custody, the landscape has changed.

With a crypto-friendly president in office and regulatory barriers falling, Wall Street’s biggest players are no longer sitting on the sidelines—they are moving in.

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State Street has a long history—it was founded in 1792—but it entered the cryptocurrency market somewhat recently. Though in the past few years the bank has made investments and teamed with others to expand its digital asset services, laws continue to be a barrier that prevents it from providing crypto custody and trading services directly.

Through a collaboration with interbank trading platform Pure Digital, the bank jumped into the institutional cryptocurrency trading space in 2021. Under this agreement, Pure Digital’s platform was powered by State Street’s foreign exchange technical know-how.

State Street’s Search for a Digital Asset Solutions Leader

The bank made a job announcement on Friday for a Head of Digital Asset Solutions. It is looking for an inventive thinker with in-depth institutional knowledge and thorough understanding of digital asset technologies.

This position answers directly to the chief product officer. They will work closely together with the best teams at State Street in product, technology, worldwide delivery, and sales. They will also interact directly with vendors, partners, and clients. This engagement includes everything from developing new product ideas to providing cutting edge digital asset services.

It is required of the candidate to be conversant with State Street business operations. This covers data services, transfers agency, accounting, and custody. It also demands understanding of technology of the next generation.

Expertise includes distributed ledger technologies, tokenization services, wallet technology, cryptocurrencies, and artificial intelligence. The employment posting also asks for experience in corporate change management and digital transformation.

The selected applicant would be the main driver behind the overall plan of State Street Digital. One can base the job in London or Boston.

State Street and the crypto asset data and software startup Lukka partnered in 2021 to provide its private fund clients with fund administration services for crypto assets.

State Street declared it will employ Lukka’s product line, which includes Lukka Reference Data and Lukka Prime Pricing Data in addition to its middle and back office data management system made especially for blockchain and cryptocurrency assets.

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Blockchain Solutions Tested

The pilot, described in a DTCC report dated May 16, was about the standardization of the way how NAV data of funds is provided across blockchains using Chainlink’s CCIP. The report demonstrated the advantages of delivering structured data on-chain and establishing standard roles and processes.

“The pilot realized that by delivering structured data on-chain and creating standard roles and processes, the foundational data could be embedded into a variety of on-chain use cases like tokenized funds and ‘bulk consumer’ smart contracts,” this is what the report said. These innovations are to help the industry explore and power many downstream applications, such as the brokerage application and more automated data dissemination.

Benefits and Participating Institutions

The pilot managed to create a better automated data management system, almost no impact on the existing market practices, customers could get historical data without manual record-keeping and there were broader API solutions for price data. The U. S. banking firms that participated in the pilot include: American Century Investments, BNY Mellon, Edward Jones, Franklin Templeton, Invesco, JPMorgan, MFS Investment Management, Mid Atlantic Trust, State Street, U.S. Bank.

Market Impact and Future Prospects

DTCC report was followed by Chainlink’s native token, LINK, which jumped 12.5% rise, on a CoinGecko. During the last 12 months LINK has soared by more than 130%, which is such a trend that we witnessed in all cryptos.

BlackRock was the first to release a tokenized money market fund (MMF) on March 19, which is called BUIDL and it runs on the Ethereum network. This fund, that gives native U. S. dollar yields to investors who buy tokens representing shares in the fund which invests in assets like U. S. Treasury bills is available for investment now! The “digital liquidity fund” is the name of BUIDL which operates as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain.

The end of the Smart NAV Pilot program is a big step towards combining traditional finance and blockchain technology. Through the partnership with top banking companies, DTCC and Chainlink have created a way for more secure, efficient and transparent financial systems to be built. The industry is still looking into these developments and the chances of using blockchain-based solutions in traditional finance are becoming more and more.

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This deal has resulted in Securrency becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of DTCC and will henceforth operate as DTCC Digital Assets.

(Securrency is led by former State Street crypto manager Nadine Chakar). It is a specialist in offering customers a solid platform for tokenization of their real-world assets. The company also claims to have one of the most comprehensive and patented compliance technologies in the industry.

According to reports, DTCC has purchased Securrency for 50 million dollars.

According to DTCC’s statement, this acquisition seems as a significant step to boost the power of corporate DeFi. Also, it seems as a step contribute to the rapid development of the corporate digital asset platform.

Securrency CEO Nadine Chakar expressed excitement about the collaboration, saying “While we merge our powers with DTCC, we are very excited to combine DTCC infrastructure capabilities with Securrency’s technology to support a future where capital market digitalization is the pioneer of innovation. These capabilities will offer DTCC the opportunity to collaborate with the industry to build a critically flexible and scalable infrastructure for mass adoption of digital assets.”

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