It looks like the need to cater to institutions’ growing desire for crypto is getting bigger and bigger amongst standard financial institutions. U.S. Bank has just announced that it is unveiling a new crypto custody service that fund managers can use to store both private keys and digital assets.
U.S. Bank Potentially Sees Crypto as Important
The idea of banks and crypto mixing is an unusual one, primarily because they are both so different. For one thing, banks seek to have control over one’s financial future. They decide who can gain access to tools and services. They look at one’s backstory, such as their job history and their debt-to-income ratio and decide who can garner bank accounts, credit cards, and other items necessary for making one’s life a little more livable.
Crypto, by comparison, is the complete opposite. The entire goal of cryptocurrency is to ensure that people have more say in how their money rolls. Crypto does not care about your background. It doesn’t care if you’ve made bad financial decisions or if you have a few blemishes in your past. So long as you have access to the internet, you can create a digital wallet and begin trading without worrying about some central figure interfering.
So, as U.S. Bank – the fifth largest bank in America – gears up to provide crypto custody for its larger customers, it becomes clear that standard monetary establishments are beginning to view crypto in a whole new light. They arguably see the growing asset space as something that cannot be ignored. Clearly, more customers are looking to cash in, and thus they need to get involved quickly or they run the risk of losing business and having unsatisfied clients.
Fusing Both Industries Together?
Investment managers can store private keys with U.S. Bank, which they can then use to access digital assets such as bitcoin, bitcoin cash, and Litecoin. In an interview, Gunjan Kedia – vice chair of the bank’s wealth management and investment services division – stated:
Our clients are getting very serious about the potential of cryptocurrency as a diversified asset class. I don’t believe there’s a single asset manager that isn’t thinking about it right now… What we were hearing across the board is that while every currency might not survive – there may not be room for thousands of coins— there’s something about the potential of this asset class and the underlying technology that would be prudent for us to stand up support for it.
The move is likely to push cryptocurrency closer towards legitimacy. U.S. Bank was founded in the year 1863 at the height of the American Civil War. It is presently a top-ten player in the custody game and currently manages more than $8 trillion in assets for clients across the nation per data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC).
