An Inflection Point for Crypto & Digital Assets
As we see the initial post-election changes in the US (recent Executive Orders and SAB 121 repeal), the opportunity for banks and financial institutions in the US, and globally, to execute on blockchain initiatives evaluated over the past few years has never been higher.
Specifically, with the repeal of SAB 121, institutions now have a clear pathway to custody digital assets for their clients. This shift is transformative. In the digital asset ecosystem, custody – and the digital asset wallet – plays a critical role, allowing security to be separated from control seamlessly. By enabling banks to safeguard digital assets, this change unlocks new possibilities for innovative products and services, empowering institutions to meet growing client demand like never before.
Whether looking at institutional custody solutions like BNY Mellon, delivering retail products and services like Nubank, Tokenizing assets like BlackRock or engaging in crypto capital markets like Galaxy, Fireblocks has been engaging in markets across the globe to deliver and scale digital asset businesses with clients in over 100 countries. This has given us industry-leading experience working with some of the most complex regulatory regimes including the United States, Brazil, Australia, Brazil, Europe, Germany, Switzerland, Singapore and Hong Kong.
With the regulatory and policy environment changing rapidly and creating a clearer path for US institutions to finally enter the industry, these tailwinds in 2025 will be the inflection point to drive the convergence between blockchain and traditional financial markets.
Driving Business Value Within Highly Regulated Institutions & Ecosystems
With emerging regulatory guidance in the US, banks entering the digital asset space will be engaging in a number of use cases including:
- Institutional Custody
- Retail Products & Services
- Tokenization of Financial Products & Real World Assets
- Stablecoin Issuance
- Payments
- Lending (e.g. Bitcoin-backed loans)
Each of these use cases will have outcomes the bank should be trying to optimize for which likely revolve around four main areas:
- Create revenue growth by offering differentiated new products & services and finding new channels & markets for distribution
- Understand and begin onboarding of ecosystem partners to quickly move from POC into Production with the required market structure
- Future proofing business to scale as adoption of blockchain-based solutions continues to grow
- Reduce operating costs & risk
As banks evaluate these use cases and outcomes, there will be a number of decisions that need to made internally in terms of how to build, test and scale these new product offerings which will require weighing considerations such as:
- Defining the relevant use cases for your institution
- How do these use cases drive revenue (e.g. open new markets, expand existing products, etc.)?
- How does this integrate into existing technology, architecture and operational workflows?
- How to operationalize this business to move from PoC to Production?
Go from Zero to Crypto with Fireblocks
Fireblocks is already working with some of the largest and most highly regulated banking institutions in the world to build and scale production use cases that include:
| Use Case | Who we work with? |
| Institutional Custody | BNY Mellon BTG SDX |
| Retail Products & Services | Wenia by Bancolombia SCB Nubank Revolut |
| Tokenization of Financial Products & Real World Assets | ABN Amro WisdomTree Securitize (for Blackrock’s BUIDL) |
| Stablecoin Issuance | Wenia by Bancolombia SCB BRL1 consortium Banking Circle |
Fireblocks provides the easiest, more secure and most efficient way to do this through:
- The most secure, battle-tested wallet infrastructure with unmatched scale and speed
- Flexible architecture with API-first development to streamline solutions and integrations into existing systems and processes
- Direct access to the largest ecosystem of digital asset institutions for liquidity, distribution, qualified custody and fiat on/off ramp partners
- One integration to tap into multiple use cases – from Custody to Asset Tokenization to Stablecoin Issuance to Trading to Payments to DeFi & Web3
- Flexible key management deployment options (SaaS or HSM)
- Widest blockchain (100+) and token support (1000s)
- Professional services for rapid prototyping & integration
Interested in learning more or how Fireblocks can help you get started building your digital asset business?
