Standard Chartered, with VARA approval, now lets Professional Investor clients in the UAE trade Bitcoin and Ether from existing bank accounts. The bank keeps custody and settlement itself, so exchanges are now its competitor for these clients, with price still untested.
Perspective Coverage
6 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 13%
- Operator
- Operator 48%
- Investor
- Investor 39%
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives55
- Confidence70
NCUA devotes 17 of its 26 proposed stablecoin Call Report fields to custody
NCUA has proposed 26 stablecoin fields for the credit union Call Report, 17 of them on custody, with a first reporting date of March 31, 2027. Any credit union planning digital-dollar custody would have to report its reserve safekeeping and key control from that first quarter-end, as data examiners review offsite.
Reality
- Evidence60
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap0
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence55
Thailand's SEC finalized rules letting passive Bitcoin and Ether ETFs list only on the Stock Exchange of Thailand from Oct. 16, 2026. Every fund must keep at least 80% average exposure to one coin, so managers will compete mostly on cost and approval speed.
Perspective Coverage
6 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 11%
- Operator
- Operator 44%
- Investor
- Investor 45%
Reality
- Evidence80
- Adoption3
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives45
- Confidence75
Bank of Russia's first crypto registers give Sberbank and VTB three of the nine slots. Both banks plan to open crypto trading to their clients by December, though Sberbank's listing so far covers custody alone.
Perspective Coverage
4 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 11%
- Operator
- Operator 48%
- Investor
- Investor 41%
Reality
- Evidence72
- Adoption15
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives40
- Confidence70
Grayscale's XRP ETF opens in-kind swaps to Virtu and Macquarie
Grayscale's XRP ETF now lets Virtu and Macquarie swap XRP directly for fund shares, according to an Oct. 5 SEC filing reported by Bitcoin.com News. Grayscale itself warns that limited dealer participation can widen spreads, so for now the fund's tracking of XRP rests on those two firms.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption30
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives45
- Confidence55
Navra, the new company of SoFi and Figure co-founder Mike Cagney, raised a $19 million Series A led by Ribbit for a self-custody front end to on-chain yield. Whether banks take it white-label will test if it is a neutral gateway or a sales channel for Figure, which Cagney chairs.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 34%
- Operator
- Operator 23%
- Investor
- Investor 43%
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+40
- Incentives80
- Confidence60
Taurus says banks must bring three systems of their own to join Swift's tokenized-deposit ledger
Taurus co-founder Lamine Brahimi says banks must build three systems of their own to join Swift's tokenized-deposit ledger, live so far with four banks. Swift coordinates the transfers while each bank pays for its own stack, and Taurus sells all three layers on one platform.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption25
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives80
- Confidence40
Meritz Securities signed a Ripple custody study on Oct. 1 while weighing five digital-asset lines, spot crypto ETFs among them. With no product or launch date attached, any payoff waits on what Korea's coming rules let brokers sell.
Reality
- Evidence60
- Adoption12
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives55
- Confidence62
BitGo CEO Mike Belshe wants trading, lending and settlement built on its custody business to produce 100% of the NYSE-listed firm's revenue. The goal would make BitGo a lender and settlement agent to the funds whose crypto it already holds.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption30
- Hype gap+35
- Incentives65
- Confidence60
Modern Treasury has applied to the OCC for a trust bank to custody stablecoins and fiat for clients of a business that has moved over $600 billion. Approval would let its corporate clients hold and move both kinds of balance through one federally supervised entity.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 22%
- Operator
- Operator 41%
- Investor
- Investor 37%
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption12
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives60
- Confidence65
BitGo's chief says the stalled CLARITY Act leaves crypto custody risk bundled inside exchanges
BitGo CEO Mike Belshe says the Senate's 50-49 vote that stalled the CLARITY Act lets single firms keep running an exchange, a brokerage and custody together. He thinks a failure at such a venue could be worse than Lehman, and reviving the bill means finding votes it lacked in September.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives70
- Confidence45
Anchorage Digital is cutting about 17% of staff, an estimated 68 jobs, eight months after Tether's $100 million investment valued it at $4.2 billion. That price covered a roughly 2.4% stake, and Anchorage's own 2023 record points to a cost cut it has reversed before.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 22%
- Operator
- Operator 40%
- Investor
- Investor 38%
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption30
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives35
- Confidence55
Absa, Africa's first bank to offer Bitcoin custody, says Bitcoin is most of what its institutional platform holds. The book draws on South Africa's stock of crypto assets, a small fraction of the value that moves through the country in a year.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption25
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives60
- Confidence60
Four global crypto infrastructure firms court Korean banks before any vendor dominates the stack
MoonPay is pursuing stablecoin, remittance and payments work with KB Financial, Woori Bank and KakaoBank after opening a Korean entity in September. Its one-vendor pitch faces three other global entrants and four Korean firms, most of them selling banks a single layer of the stack.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption20
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives60
- Confidence45
SBI takes Japan's crypto custody lead with a 46.7 billion yen Bitbank buyout
SBI Holdings closed its 46.7 billion yen purchase of Bitbank on October 1, becoming Japan's largest crypto exchange group by assets held for customers. The price, about 8 yen per 100 yen of client crypto, is a bet on scale as Japan brings crypto under securities law.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption65
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence55
Forging a 1024-bit RSA signature through an HSM costs under 0.3% of factoring the key
UC San Diego and Inria researchers forged a 1024-bit RSA signature through an HSM in 1,380 core-years, against at least 500,000 to factor the key. The attack only works with raw, unpadded signing access, so how exposed a custodian is depends on how its HSM is configured.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+12
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence52
Researchers forge RSA signatures from a hardware security module by making it sign 4 billion raw numbers
UC San Diego and INRIA researchers forged RSA signatures on a 1,024-bit key inside a hardware security module after about 4 billion signing requests. The key stayed inside the device throughout, so for custodians the exposure is in signing settings, starting with the FIPS mode the researchers switched off.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence40
The Responsible Fintech Institute has put NIST-standardized signing in front of supervisors from Abu Dhabi, Bhutan and Malta. The code that would let anyone check the work comes later.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption12
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives55
- Confidence62
The fund charges 2.5% a year on about $100,000 of day-one assets held with BitGo, four weeks after Grayscale's US Zcash ETF began trading on NYSE Arca. The European money has not shown up yet.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption28
- Hype gap+44
- Incentives72
- Confidence57
Kakao Pay and KakaoBank signed a non-binding memorandum with Fireblocks for stablecoin infrastructure, the second such agreement Kakao has signed since July, while KB Financial and Toss have already run won-stablecoin pilots.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 27%
- Operator
- Operator 35%
- Investor
- Investor 38%
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption22
- Hype gap+34
- Incentives72
- Confidence68