EN |Future of Custody: From Traditional Assets to Digital, Centralized to Decentralized | MERGE 2025

Okay, so we're starting. So, I was waiting for people to give me a mic and I have it already. Good afternoon, everyone. We are on the panel of the on the panel the future of custody and we are going to discuss how it has evolved and how we are going from traditional to decentralized. And we actually have the best speakers here to talk about it because they bring experience from both institution and web three industries.

So, let's start with introductions. Luis, could you please tell me a little bit about yourself? Sure. Um I am as you can see, I believe. I am managing director for Latin America at BitGo.

My background is all technology. I come from AWS, Salesforce, Oracle, IBM. So, I am pretty technical if you will. And that's a little bit about me. Amazing.

I'm Aly Dasgupta from Sygnum Bank. Over there, I lead BD and I also work on product innovation. Sygnum is actually if you haven't heard of us before, we're the world's first digital asset bank. And so, we really look at the integration of TradFi and DeFi and see where we can develop new market infrastructure to really bring the power of crypto to the traditional banking world. Yes, Stijn van der Staak I'm the CEO of CryptoFinance.

We provide um trading services but also custody services in the institutional business area. So, my clients are mostly banks. And yeah, that's what we do. Good afternoon. Uh we don't see any of you so we won't be able to ask you any questions because we don't see if you raise your hands.

Just kind of frustrating. Uh but my name is Eric Piscini. I'm the CEO of Hashgraph. Hashgraph is the team behind Hedera which is a layer one blockchain that I'm sure many of you know already. Um thank you guys.

Your experience sounds inspiring and it reminds us that the future of custody is not somewhere, it's here and we are building it. So, it naturally brings me to the question of institutional maturity. And Aly, this one will be to you. I know that Sygnum Bank has recently unveiled Bitcoin yield fund and could you share like what were the signs of institutional maturity of crypto that actually made this decision possible? Yeah, I mean I think this is really one of the um symptoms that you see in the market of the market really maturing and moving forward.

And to be able to create these types of products, it really takes um first of course regulatory clarity. In Switzerland, we've been very lucky because right from the get-go back in 2017, we already had the first ICO letter and so on from FINMA. And then later in '21, the DLT Act which enabled us to sort of think more broadly about crypto assets and how they can work alongside traditional assets. But um the next piece of this puzzle is also having the right kind of market plumbing, having the infrastructure in place that has these different venues for custody, for market depth to address different signs of volatility that institutional customers really need before they can commit to coming into this space. So, having that in place and then of course the third is in demand.

And we all know um the way the global um the political sphere looks right now. And for example, how the US dollar has performed compared to say the euro or the Swiss franc, we know that from our clients, we see the demand where they say they don't want to have a yield in US dollar because it doesn't mean as much as having it actually denominated in Bitcoin. And it's not like a crazy Bitcoin person that says this. It's actually people who can see look at the market and see the the the value of their crypto assets in euro or Swiss franc haven't been as exciting as maybe as you would see it in US dollar. And so, um when you're able to see that the market is asking for these types of alternative solutions, you see the way gold has been um growing this year.

It's because people are looking for those kind of safe hedges and uh positions outside of dollar denominated assets. And so, that was actually one of the reasons why also this product found its space. And it's only when all these factors kind of come together, you usually see a the the the right moment in the market to create a product like this. Agreed. Some factors like a a couple of them.

Eric, could you please also share your perspective? Maybe some examples of what signals tell us that the industry is ready for institutional adoption or why it's not ready if you think otherwise. It's not ready. No, it is ready. Um no, I I I think it's interesting.

So, I started 12 years ago uh my journey in blockchain. And 12 years ago, it was not even a discussion, right? Luis and I were talking backstage before we started. 12 years ago, BitGo did not exist, right? So, um I think I think now we are at a stage where especially the last last 12 months where we've seen tremendous uh initiatives whether it's regulatory initiatives, capital market with all the ETPs, ETFs, DATs, all the acronyms, right?

IPO coming up with BitGo. Um all of that is generating a huge amount of interest for institutions to use custody solutions. So, it's an exciting time. I think it's I think we are ready from a technology point of view. I don't think anyone can say technology is not ready anymore.

We are already, right? I think it's more of a a regulatory and a education effort now that we have to do. Yeah, for sure. I also want to ask about like values of crypto from technological standpoint. Georgi, Eric, maybe Luis you could share like what specific values of crypto industry could help it like reach the same standards as traditional finance have or maybe exceed those.

It's actually a little interesting the digital centralized to decentralized because all of the regulations that we're seeing right now are actually coming to regulate the centralized part of it. Decentralized, I think we're a little far from actually getting some regulation on top of that. But what does it bring and what can it offer the technology of blockchain and the wallets and everything? I think the most important thing that we can get for the centralized piece is trustlessness uh because now you can have smart contracts running in several blockchains, you can pick your own blockchain. But you can build a contract in which you can trust.

You don't need to trust another counterparty, you don't need to trust a another person uh you can go directly with a token and uh change it, take a loan, take uh um several things, even sign uh some things through the blockchain. And I think that piece of technology is the one that actually gets us to to something uh that challenges traditional finance right now because traditional finance is too slow in that in that front. And yes, you as a as a user need to trust who you're speaking. Uh either if it is a bank or or others, you need to trust them. So, I think that is where the the play is changed a little bit with blockchain.

Got you. Thank you. And we mentioned regulations a few times already. Where can we go without them? Uh Stijn, the next questions the next question is to you.

Like CryptoFinance is regulated by both FINMA and BaFin. Uh in your perspective, how regulation is like um influences the life of crypto players both like companies and individuals. Is it making our lives easier because it's more clear or harder because of any reasons? Well, that's a good question. I think it makes the life of our clients easier because there is more security around the whole topic.

And we saw that before the adoption of MiCA, um not many European banks were driving into crypto because it was like, "Yeah, but we don't have regulation, we don't have legal certainty. What about this and that?" And and as you said, in Switzerland, we were quite early, luckily. So, the first banks came out of Switzerland. Um and then when MiCA was adopted, um large financial institutions are starting to dive into the topic, right?

I mean, does it make my life easier? Um probably not because you will have to adhere to all those rules. And I can assure you if you have to spend like 20 or 30% of your OPEX instead of in into developers, into lawyers, and into consultants, and and and have more meetings with the regulator than you can focus on your clients and our products, this is this is not good. And today, I perceive it as more easy. When we started, we got our license in '19 around '19 in Switzerland.

I mean, you had to explain everything, right? It was really like pioneering the way, educating the Swiss regulator. Now, then we got our BaFin licenses, it was a bit easier. Um but still it was a lot of pioneering. And now with MiCA, I I sense a bit that um most regulators know what they're talking about, know what they're dealing with, and it's becoming easier.

Now, is there a way to adopt crypto in the traditional financial landscape without regulation? It's never going to happen. Never ever. And I mean also in in in in DeFi or decentralized finance, technology-wise, we could do so many great things, right? We could we could improve the financial system as it stands today.

We could have new products, we could have new yield farming, etc. etc. You name it. From a technology perspective, we can do it. But bringing that into a regulatory setup where the regulator signs off on it and where a large-scale um EU SIP bank basically says, "Yeah, I'm going to go for it because at the end that's my client and if my client doesn't like it, there's no point of me offering it, right?"

Um then it's it it it will not happen. So, I think we will see all that down the road, but it we just started. Right? And And what we see now is the adoption of crypto, which is good. Tokenization, stablecoins, it's all coming.

A lot of good ideas. But regulator regulators and um legal and laws is usually very very very slow. And this is the bottleneck. Right? Um yeah.

Thank you. Like Loise, the next question will be to you again because I've seen the recent news about license obtainment for BitGo. Uh and I seen how you agreeing with what Tim saying. Could you please share a little bit about like not whether it's harder or easier, but does the regulation bring us closer to the web three future of finance or vice versa? So, definitely uh regulation gives uh certainty to people to people and businesses.

So, uh regulation is good. Um one would say if you're a uh Bitcoin maximalist, you would say, "No, no regulation." But yeah, regulation is good. It actually uh settles the ground, settles some ground rules again uh to businesses, people in how to interact in this landscape. Uh once again, particularly MiCA, uh it set up the stage for uh a lot of countries.

So, the European Union and many other countries that are trying to follow MiCA. We were speaking about this backstage that at the end most of the countries uh like uh from where I'm come from in Latin America, uh they tend to follow others. Like uh they don't like to build their own regulations and and whatsoever. They point like, "Yeah, if you adhere to this regulation, we're going to be fine." And uh yes, for BitGo, uh it it was a heavy lifting.

It is a heavy lifting. A lot of lawyers, a lot of uh uh compliance stuff, but now that you're there, um you can start doing things that actually really matter. Uh you start seeing uh banks that are trying to get um into the crypto uh landscape with a product either uh lending, borrowing, which is very popular, or even just uh providing wallets uh for customers. So, definitely once again, uh regulation is good. Uh it gives us a a fair ground.

So, uh everybody can compete on that fair ground. And uh it is actually what ignites the the innovation uh and I'm certain that most of that innovation will come now that the rules are uh more or less uh fair fairly stated already. Thank you.

Lisa, can I add to this? Sure. Um I I think what's interesting to me is when you see the evolution of innovation, um typically you have a lot of innovation coming from startups early stage, which is what we've seen in the crypto and blockchain industry. And then every big organization, banks, financial institutions, they were waiting for regulation in order to innovate themselves, right? So, they were innovating by proxy, by partnering with us, by partnering with BitGo and others.

Now we have this wave of innovation coming from the traditional players and that's going to change dramatically the industry, right? It's going to make our lives e- uh harder as as innovators because now we have competitors we know it against the big banks. But at the same time, I think it creates so much opportunities for all of us that it is a really exciting time. And I think also for banks, it's interesting because there's kind of two tracks of innovation that happens. You have um kind of access to digital assets as one piece where they start to see, "Okay, maybe their clients also want to buy Bitcoin or you know, have Ethereum or stake Ethereum or something like this."

And then on the other side, they're actually looking at their own plumbing to say, "Hey, um where can blockchain bring optimization and speed and efficiency?" And that's where you see a lot more innovation on let's say the deposit tokens, for example, Signum did this with UBS and PostFinance recently to try and actually use the infrastructure to bring that efficiency into kind of core banking operations. Um like JP Morgan is doing this also now with Connexus and so on. And on both sides, I mean at Signum, for example, we really um are always looking at the industry to be we've been waiting for so long. We we we got a license in 2019 like crypto finance, but uh as a bank, you also want you need the ecosystem to kind of come on board for any of these transactions to be meaningful.

I mean, it's very lonely on your blockchain by yourself, right? You need to have the other institutions there as well. And so, now finally we're coming to a place where, you know, things like the Agora project where you have a hundred different banks working together on different uh creating different infrastructure rails that people can actually use, that institutions can use between themselves. Um this is where the innovation that Eric is also mentioning is really starting to move forward. And then of course, on the second track, you also have everyone starting to think about, "Ah, but our clients are taking all their money from the bank account and going to Coinbase or Kraken or, you know, somewhere else to invest in uh crypto.

And so, maybe it's better that we give them access over here." And so, yeah, it's basically two tracks to always look out for. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Thank you. Like we talked a lot about institutional adoption and institutional custody, but cryptocurrency it's about users holding their own key keys, right?

So, Eric, I want to address this question probably to you. Could you maybe tell a little bit about how do you see the balance between custody as a professional service and empowering users to be like their own uh in charge of their own custody? Um All right, that's interesting. Um you know, how many of you would like to have, you know, your your the entire amount of your bank account with you right now in your pocket and travel with it, right? No one.

No one is going to want to do that. It's too risky, right? If I lose it, if I get, you know, uh attacked in, you know, somewhere and I lose all my money. Um So, I think it's a matter of choice. I think we need to give users, you know, big and small, the choice.

We need to tell them, "If you want, you can custody your own assets with your own system, on your own phone, on your own system. But you also have opportunities to custody with others. By the way, the majority of my crypto is not on my on my phone, right? Don't try to get it from me. Um but but but um because because I don't trust my own behavior for for keeping my crypto with me.

I I always, you know, do that with others. Uh so, I think it's a matter of choice and I think that's where this panel is very interesting because we are offering the choice. We can be in charge of your own crypto as an institution or as a user uh and you can decide to outsource, in a way, the custody of that crypto as well. It's a matter of choice. Thank you.

Anybody would also like to broaden this? Yeah, maybe you have to also distinguish, right? I mean, on on a natural person, I can decide I have my wallet in my pocket or I have my crypto in my bank account, but then you also have the institutional investors, right? I mean, BlackRock cannot have a ledger wallet in their office with a 90 billion on there, right? So, they are again regulated.

They have to have a proper custodian, which is recognized as one uh and so forth. So, you always will have the need for custodians in crypto. Otherwise, you shut off the whole asset management market of that asset class because that's also market that is regulated and has a need for centralized custodians from the traditional world. Yes, maybe down the road, again, we get there that we are in a world where um a fund has a custodian on the blockchain, whatever. Um but we're not there yet.

As of today, if if a fund wants to invest in in in crypto, um or an asset manager that that manages fund, he has to have a proper custodian. So, there will always be that need, right? From an institutional perspective, at least. Yes. Yeah.

And And I think I think what we also, I forgot to mention, but we are talking about crypto, but it's much bigger than crypto. It's any kind of asset that's going to be digitized in the future. It could be uh you know, what we call real world asset tokenization. Could be a security, could be a bond, could be your own your own house, right? You don't want to carry all of that with you.

And And by the way, you need, you know, regulatory and servicing of those assets done by third parties anyway. So, might as well give that to, you know, those platforms. We often say at Signum that the future has heritage. Because back in 2015 or 16, you had this really utopian ideal of like, "Oh, we'd never need banks again. We're going to be free.

We will have our own money in our own pocket and no one can control us." And it was I mean, there are still fringes of the ecosystem that feel this way, but I think more and more the entire ecosystem accepts that to have this broader adoption, to have the institutions come and join, you actually need this, let's say, bridge between um some level of sovereignty and, you know, self-determination, which I think crypto has been really really powerful for several nations to see, but also to have this uh the rules and the the safeguards that institutions have in place to ensure that I mean a really simple one is like in payments if I make a transaction on my credit card that's wrong I call someone and say hey can you fix it for me and then they send me back my money. With crypto if I paid with USDC there's a very very low possibility that I will ever see those funds again. And so you need kind of to build in those types of safeguards in order to bring that broader adoption. Yeah I would like to add only that custody at the end it is sometimes people think that custody is a commodity or something that it's easy to build and somewhat it has to be easy but it also has to be of several layers like when when you say inheritance one of the things that comes to mind for me is I buy Bitcoin for my daughters as a weekly I don't know savings account.

And imagine that I custody my keys myself right? I know how to do it I'm a an engineer and I know about crypto cryptographic keys no crypto the the coins itself so I understand the flow but what happens if I die? Like my daughters will get my Bitcoin? Like most likely they won't. So one needs to find a solution for that and that is the approach that at least at BitGo we we lead with we allow either if you're an institution uh almost no no individuals but all institutions how complex would they want that approach to crypto to be either you trust us as a qualified custodian for example where we are regulated we cannot lose your assets they cannot steal them from us we cannot misuse them for example but we also have other capabilities in which you want your keys here are your keys I will co-sign everything that you come from or even farther than that we mix the technology custody with physical custody.

We actually get some keys inside bank vaults for example so you can only sign inside the bank vault. One of the most important hacks of I'll say this year I don't remember this was this year bybit that they stole from a software. I think there are many ways of doing custody wrong and that is where players like us come in. We allow you to think about custody at your pace at your appetite of risk and we can enable you for for custody that. Yeah thank you and your daughter is a lucky for sure.

I want to address the next question to you Elia but I see that you had something to add on this one.

No I was just going to also say it's so important to have that flexibility because you don't want the responsibility of everything but you also kind of want the access when you need it and having multi-sig accounts has been one of the ways in which you can bring that level of social security to any crypto assets and that's kind of one of the steps in the custody chain that say for institutions banking with Sygnum we always see that um you have a different person responsible for sending assets in and out a different person responsible for trading and somebody else who handles fiat accounts and so even with just setting up systems that provide this um kind of rounded custody it enables institutions to feel safer with how they um engage with digital assets cuz it's still such a new thing and it's still something they're anxious about. Yeah for sure. I I actually all really liked your thought about the heritage that we have but I wanted to ask you like are we at risk at losing anything as we as we are moving more to decentralized from centralized? Is there like something we can't get with crypto and won't ever be able to? So I think you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater right?

There's uh you can always say centralization is terrible and you know throw it out to the dogs and then we work in a new paradigm now but um centralization also has some benefits right? Like all this regulation that we've been talking about the security that gives us to innovate that's that comes from some vectors of centralization and if you think about um the the the the safeguards that you have in place whether it's insurance and reinsurance solutions for custody providers that I'm sure most custody providers are also thinking about now or um uh safeguards for clients working with crypto assets these are all things that centralized providers enable. On the alternate side on the other side you also have uh you know all all the benefits of decentralization that we all obviously um agree with and adhere to and that's why we're all sitting in this conference room today right? That um building taking a bit the best of both worlds cuz I mean at the end of the day you don't want to be transacting with a North Korean hacker on chain and you don't know for sure the address that you're interacting with isn't one and that's why these KYC principles that most regulated providers now have in place enable or brings those types of safeguards into transactions in a way that's even more secure than traditional finance has and this is something that one of the regulator the regulators are kind of starting to wrap their heads around a little bit is that the level of forensics that's possible on chain is far superior to what you can see in traditional finance and that brings so much more transparency for better or worse to interactions and engagements on chain. Yeah thank you.

Yeah I mean there there is another dimension to this or I I tell you there are in case you don't know we have a a council general you know managing the network. So it's 39 organizations running nodes of the network. This is a decentralized model so there is not one single entity controlling the network it's those people working together. So we can apply your question about decentralization at different level and I like the fact that we are learning about decentralization all of us still and we can apply that at the governing level at the technology level and so on. Decentralization is hard and we all know that because we've been trying that for a long time.

It is hard we have to re-educate ourselves re-educate the systems and the behavior of the individuals it's not easy. Although what I would say is decentralization is actually starting to happen. So while it is hard and we've all have fought some battles maybe some of you have sent actually USDC to a North Korean hacker every now and then just because you're playing with bridges you're playing with I don't know swaps whatever you're you're trying to do but decentralization is actually happening. I was looking at this chart of people so we have Binance B2C Ripple uh Bourse uh Kraken Equi G and and I wonder how many of those actually existed as you said 12 years ago right? BitGo did exist at 12 years ago just for for a fact but what is starting to happen is that underneath these big players like Equi G I know them very well if you are a user you can actually interact with other users in a decentralized level right?

Maybe the rules are not clear yet they will get clear but you can start trusting the technology itself like literally I'm again an engineer in code I trust so I do love the the idea of decentralization but it has to be accompanied by a centralization at the end. It has to get a name on it unless we want to live in this world in which I die I lose my keys my daughters won't get their Bitcoin right? If that doesn't happen we like there is no decentralization if I am the only sole owner of my keys. Yeah we we we talked many times about the trust layers right? So we said that from a technology point of view we have that you know Bitcoin was the first one trust layer you don't need to trust anyone you can you know exchange value but your point we need a a business trust layer and that's where we actually think of the banks and the regulators to provide that.

Yeah I mean custody is about trust right? Um I mean the technology we all have to get right we're all regulated I mean we all it's a prerequisite otherwise we don't we don't start the race and but then it comes down to trust who do I trust my Bitcoin with right? Cuz I'm absolutely with you um if I die and have my private key somewhere they're gone right? They're gone. Um so I think we will see also in a decentralized system aspects that are still centralized right?

Um and custody from my perspective is certainly one of them. This is a huge part of what we see at Sygnum as well so we work with institutions but also with private clients and for so many of them it's really people who've maybe made some wealth in crypto and they say look if I die tomorrow if I get hit by a bus my wife and kids won't be able to access this money and we need to have literally just a bank who they can call and say, "How do we move the assets over to the family's name?" And it's something so simple, something so banal that most people before crypto wouldn't have considered it even a problem, right? Because there's always been a bank who you could trust to do this for you. But uh to this is why centralized players will continue to play a role.

It's just super important. Got it.

Lisa, we keep talking about people dying. We need to move to something cheerful. Yeah, it's a little bit sad and I think think it was reflected on my face. So the the next question uh is like but overall we are talking a lot about that centralization must still be in place, but how do we see on examples of some initiatives or products that in general the tendency is towards decentralization? Luis, could you please answer this one?

Sure. Um I think the the most easy one is borrow lending. Uh there are many platforms now that are allowing uh for example for you to place as collateral whatever you have Bitcoin, Ethereum, or something and get USDC, USD, even dollars uh as uh as the loan and that is a good example of decentralization. At the end uh if there's a peer-to-peer transaction and we are just uh saying, "Okay, uh uh lend me some money. Yes, here's 100 bucks with a specific interest rate and everything all written in a smart contract."

Like that is decentralization right there. Um there are other examples that are starting uh to uh to grow throughout the world uh and they are about uh real-world assets and the tokenization piece. And it is how do I for example own a uh a parcel in which they grow tomatoes for example, right? Do I own a token about uh uh of land? Yes, I could do that and that can be in a decentralized way with an owner of that land that maybe has several acres and uh I just buy one piece of that and in exchange what I have is maybe a title uh it is a still to be regulated by the way, but maybe a title that uh will grant me I don't know five tomatoes a day, 10 tomatoes a day, something, right?

And that is also uh part of the decentralization process in which there is there doesn't need to be an intermediary for me to get my Right? Uh so Decentralization and maybe also in the form of democratization. So back in 2019 or 2020 I think we um tokenized a Picasso painting. And this is one of those like big stories because you know everyone likes to hear a headline about Picasso, but it basically made someone like me who would never in a million years be able to afford a Picasso painting um actually have rare art as a component of my personal portfolio. And that's something that uh normally like these types of assets are simply not available to most people.

And now because of bringing these types of things on chain for another example is um Hamilton Lane. It's a big uh money market fund. Uh a typical ticket to enter uh Hamilton Lane position would be 125k. Uh but this is reduced by literally almost 100% down to uh a thousand dollars as an entry point for something that is really quite uh a a exclusive product. Like nobody has access to these types of things and with the automation and efficiency that the back end makes possible I don't have a massive compliance team that's sitting and on repapering each single client that is going to uh take a position in a you know for a thousand francs.

It's it's actually just a token that they buy and they hold and it's um it's one of the ways in which we really see um the maturity of the market coming in. Like these are all the hopes and dreams that we had back in 2015 and now they start to materialize and that makes everyone at least I mean it for maybe I speak too early for my uh panelists, but uh it makes us all very hopeful because we're we're starting to materialize on all these claims. Yeah, I think it's happening already and I think I would go to even further. I would say when we started our journey we said financial inclusion is also going to be part of the decentralization journey, right? And being able to say anyone can access value whether it's currency or any any kind of assets uh even if it's a very tiny uh amount uh that's also something that we need to continue to work on, right?

Yeah, I think I mean the whole tokenization bit, right? I mean when we look at the beginning of the internet how it transformed information I think when we look at tokenization it's going to be similar to value how we see value, how we value things and especially on financial inclusion if you want to buy a Tesla stock in most western countries you can do so, but in some countries you don't have access to that, right? So um and here tokenization I think is is is not the um solving every problem but certainly there is a lot especially in the inclusion bit that can be solved. Yes, definitely. Thank you.

You raised very good point. And a lot of times when people are talking about crypto solving the problems of unbanked people, during the discussion we still uh like go to the point where people need to invest in bank to be able to transfer their funds and so they become crypto. So um is is there a way to that crypto could help unbanked people or will banks remain central uh for much longer than we expect them to be? Uh could you please answer this one as well? Um I think we will have banks around for um much longer um but they will be different uh from now certainly.

And we see that already, right? I mean if you look if I look at Coinbase, if I look at Kraken, if I look at the young crowd that trades crypto and everything is instant, it's now. Now explain them if they sell their Tesla um stock that they have to wait two days to get the money. Why? I I just sold it.

Where is my money? Where is it? How how is that possible? What's T+2? That's not acceptable.

Um so and and you see that Coinbase as for security license, they will move into TradFi very fast because they have the financial resources and that will put massive pressure on banks also to move, but they cannot move that fast, right? However, they have another um on the other side they have the trust. Right? They have the trust, they also have the clients and and it's it's going to be a fight. Um the ones coming from the tech side, the other ones coming from the TradFi side moving into the space and it's quite interesting to see currently and it puts um very much a lot of energy into the system, right?

From both sides um which moves things and this is quite good because it it um puts uh budgets into the space, it pushes the space forward and this is really great to see. Thank you. Um and also it's important to understand that crypto not only matures, it also evolves and we have different kinds of um funds. So I want to address this question to you, Eric. I know that Hedera has tokenization capabilities.

Um could you please share your perspective on if like custody institutions should adopt to new forms of value such as LWAs or are we there? Is is anything missing by now? An- anything missing in the the custody space? The how Yeah, how custody is is adopted to new forms of value. Yeah, I I think we touched a little bit on that already, but to to to me the the custodian um providers BitGo, you know, we we partner with you know BitGo, Fireblocks, all of them.

Um they're going to they're going to have to they continue to adopt additional real-world tokenization, asset tokenization platform. They're going to they they are forcing the banks to actually do that, too. Which is very interesting to me. They are they are pushing the banks to innovate way more than they used to uh except you uh because you're doing that already. Um but but I think that's that's what's going to happen.

Um and then the onboarding of new assets into those custody platform is going to have to be much faster, too. So if tomorrow I want to custody, you know, my house, I'm expecting a bunch of custodian platforms to support that. Like tomorrow, not in a month, right? And that going to accelerate um the the evolution of of all those players uh including us supporting them. I think that's one of the dimension.

I think we are out of time, Lisa. Yeah. I think they are getting the sign. So sorry, I didn't get it. Okay.

Please go go go. I it's it's just I see that on the screen. Oh oh we we are it's about time. Yeah, it's it's it's it's actually was the last question. So I just want you guys to maybe share a few words about what do you think will be there like determining factor that will um change the future of custody in the next five years.

Uh so I mean the the challenge I gave yesterday to the uh at the beginning of the event was I believe that um assets who are not going to be tokenized in three to five years will be less valuable that their equivalent tokenized. And that's that has a lot of implications for financial markets if it's true, but you can tell me if I'm wrong. Yeah, I would certainly agree and um maybe within the next 5 years uh currently the adoption time for a an an an tradfi bank for crypto is roughly to get them ready 18 to 24 months. So, I 5 years is is is not a long period, basically. Um I don't think we see much change, but much more adoption, right?

In the next 2 to 3 years, we still will adopt crypto. There will be more tokenization projects coming down the line. We'll see stablecoins um um coming up to stage also in tradfi, in traditional banking, in international payments. Uh the payment sector definitely will change. That will also have a significant impact on custodians.

Um and um then the next thing is the widely adoption of um tokenized securities in the whole security system that we know it today with um the the central clearing as well and all all that kind of stuff, right? Thank you.

more like from my perspective 5 to 10 years. Yeah. Um yeah, on tokenized securities, I think it's also that regulation has to catch up because the way um a house is tokenized on chain is fundamentally still different than how you would trade a Tesla stock, and that still needs to kind of um we need to circle the square on that, and regulators have to find a way to accept that. And then the other piece I think is also in um interoperability because right now we still have so many different chains doing different types of tokenization on different parts of the world, and uh bringing them all together into something that actually enables this kind of quick atomic interactions between all of these different types of assets and um on underlying tech stacks. I think that's also going to be an important piece.

I I think I'll close this. Uh what I think is uh on the future of custody particularly is personalization. So, um what I think it's going to come uh a time where where you go to your bank or uh I see Binance t-shirt uh like So, you will go to Binance uh the bank or whoever holds uh your crypto, and you will ask for a specific personalization about uh the custody. And that's exactly how uh providers uh in the in the uh in in the landscape, we actually thrive with that because that is what we enable, and that's uh what our ultimate goal is uh in terms of custody, of course. Thank you.

Uh Thank you for this panel. We are running out of time, so I guess this this that's it. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.