Robin Vince, President and CEO of BNY Mellon, reported in a recent interview that the banking and financial services company plans to offer its custody service for tokenized securities and cryptocurrencies in Asia as part of its global expansion.
As Vince pointed out to Asian portal Nikkei, the cryptocurrency business is a new growth area for the bank, which is considered the oldest in the United States, with its predecessor founded in 1784.
BNY Mellon and cryptocurrency
But BNY Mellon’s interest in crypto assets isn’t entirely new. After all, in 2021 the bank has created a dedicated cryptocurrency division. And in October last year, as reported by CriptoFácil, BNY Mellon launched a crypto custody service for its clients.
In doing so, they became the first systemic US banks to allow their clients to use the same platform to store crypto and traditional assets. It is worth noting that in the asset custody sector, BNY is the largest player in the world, with assets under management of $30 trillion.
According to Vince, a former Goldman Sachs CEO who joined BNY Mellon in 2020, over time the bank hopes to offer digital asset custody to everyone.
“We are global. We will be led by the customer,” he said, who took over as CEO of BNY in August 2022.
However, before expanding the cryptocurrency custody service to additional markets, BNY Mellon will analyze the demand among institutional investors and take other factors into account.
Coding era
Regarding the tokenization of assets, Vince highlighted that the world is living in the “tokenization era,” promoted by blockchain technology. As for the CEO, BNY Mellon is already ahead of its competitors in providing custody services for digital assets.
“We expect that over the next 10, 20, 30 years, we will see more assets held in token form and managed on blockchains,” he said. As the world’s largest bouncer, we want to be part of this revolution. This is why we started saving digital assets. It is the beginning of our journey and we think the tokenized asset is an interesting one.”
When it comes to securing tokenized assets, BNY Mellon is also really ready. After all, the bank has invested in Fireblocks, a cryptocurrency custody service provider, and jointly developed technology to protect digital assets.