BNY Digital Asset Custody

Company and ownership

BNY is the corporate brand of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, a Delaware company listed on the New York Stock Exchange with its head office at 240 Greenwich Street in New York. The group traces its history to the Bank of New York, founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1784, and Robin Vince is chief executive. BNY reported $63.4 trillion in assets under custody and/or administration at September 30, 2026, a figure it labels preliminary.

Digital Asset Custody is the group's crypto safekeeping service. An enterprise Digital Assets Unit was set up in 2021, and the platform went live in the United States on October 11, 2022, when select clients could start holding and transferring bitcoin and ether. On October 8, 2026, BNY said it had extended the service to select institutions in the European Union under the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation (MiCA).

Custody model and security

Client assets are kept in segregated wallets. According to the October 2026 announcement, the platform relies on multiparty computation (MPC) and private key storage, with risk management and security controls on top. At the US launch BNY integrated Fireblocks and Chainalysis technology for security and compliance.

Exchange-traded fund filings add detail. The April 2026 prospectus for the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust (MSBT) names The Bank of New York Mellon and Coinbase Custody Trust Company as its bitcoin custodians and says the trust's bitcoin is held in offline, multi-layer cold storage vaults. The filing states that BNY currently produces a SOC 1 Type 1 report. It also says both custodians screen incoming bitcoin with blockchain analytics and run anti-money laundering and sanctions programs.

Regulation and insurance

In the US the custodian is The Bank of New York Mellon, a New York state-chartered member bank of the Federal Reserve System, which is its primary federal regulator. The European service runs through The Bank of New York Mellon SA/NV in Brussels, a Belgian credit institution whose MiCA competent authority is the National Bank of Belgium (NBB). ESMA's interim MiCA register lists its notification for custody and administration of crypto-assets and for transfer services; the NBB confirmed the file as complete on July 20, 2026, and the entry names 30 EEA countries.

BNY states that digital assets are not insured by the FDIC and are not deposits. The MSBT prospectus says the custodians hold insurance through their parent companies for events such as theft or fraud. That cover is shared among all their customers and does not pay for a drop in bitcoin's value.

Products and integrations

The platform supports bitcoin, ether, Solana and USD Coin, and BNY says it plans to add other crypto-assets and stablecoins. BNY presents custody as connecting to its collateral management and payments services, some of which it says are still in design. Clients see digital and traditional holdings together for settlement and accounting. For MSBT, BNY also acts as administrator, transfer agent and cash custodian. In August 2026 BNY and Galaxy announced a collaboration to add staking, with Galaxy as design partner and the offering subject to regulatory review. Ripple chose BNY in July 2025 as primary custodian of the reserves behind its RLUSD stablecoin, and a separate Data on Chain service publishes validated data to public blockchains through smart contracts.