Custodians: The Impropable Catalysts of the Token Revolution?

Digital Asset Custody 2025 Recap

On 3 December 2025, Future of Finance hosted Digital Asset Custody 2025 at the Aon Centre in London. The full-day event brought together leaders from finance, regulation and technology to examine how custodians are shaping the next phase of the token economy. Discussions explored the evolving role of custodians in asset security, trading enablement, digital identity, and global regulatory divergence, as well as the industry’s trajectory towards consolidation or convergence as institutions prepare for a fully tokenised future.

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The Event in Numbers

5

Panel Sessions

28

Speakers

100+

Registered Delagates

80+

Represented Companies

Key Takeaways

Keynote

1. Traditional custodians have strong controls, but many still aren’t fully equipped for the speed and structure needed for digital assets.| 2. Digital assets work differently from traditional securities, with instant ownership and real-time data that reshape risk and operations. 3. Banks can win in digital custody, but only if they bridge legacy systems with new infrastructure. 4. Tech-native firms innovate quickly, yet often lack the mature governance clients expect. 5. Private-key protection is now the core of asset safety, and failures here are catastrophic. 6. Self-custody and third-party custody will coexist, with assets moving fluidly between models depending on their purpose. 7. The biggest risks remain security, operational resilience, and proving that a custodian can actually safeguard what it claims to hold.

Not all digital asset custodians are created equal

PANEL 1

1. Banks and custodians will play a key role in keeping digital markets safe as trading volume grows, especially when regulators tighten rules on due-diligence and asset handling. 2. Moving to near-instant settlement creates real challenges, because current systems and approval processes were built for slower timelines. 3. Faster settlement is only useful if the surrounding ecosystem (funding, instructions, confirmations) can keep up. 4. Using stablecoins or tokenised cash can help free up liquidity and keep trading moving around the clock, especially for cross-border flows. 5. Custodians need strong, real-time risk checks because digital assets introduce new risks, including cyber threats and smart-contract issues. 6. Trading firms want certainty where they know the asset exists, is controlled, and can be delivered immediately, which puts pressure on custodians. 7. Clear regulation and consistent standards are still lacking. Clarity in those will help more institutions engage in digital trading with confidence.

How digital asset custodians can facilitate trading

PANEL 2

1. Digital identity needs to cover individuals, entities and delegated authorities, ensuring not only who someone is but also who is acting on behalf of whom in digital transactions. 2. Despite the global consistency of legal-entity identifiers (LEIs), the digital world requires additional layers of verifiable authority, usable across any platform and jurisdiction. 3. Banks and other firms still face slow, paper-heavy onboarding because inconsistent standards, regulations and internal processes differ so widely across markets. 4. The real barriers are a lack of shared standards and incentives, not the technology itself. 5. Digital identity can dramatically improve KYC, trust frameworks, authentication, and customer lifecycle management, enabling single sign-on, secure digital signatures, and more seamless interactions. 6. Progress depends on trusted credentials and regulatory recognition of reliable data sources, and a shift toward models where individuals and companies control and selectively share their own data. 7. Adoption will grow as banks, governments, wallet providers and others offer interoperable IDs, driven by regulation, convenience, and the need for stronger security in an increasingly digital ecosystem.

Is digital identity the killer app for digital asset custodians?

PANEL 3

1. Jurisdiction matters for insurers, clients, and regulators, who place significant weight on where a custodian is licensed, with major differences in credibility, regulatory rigour, and market perception across the US, UK, EU, and other offshore hubs. 2. Well-structured regulatory frameworks make risks easier for insurers to assess and materially improve institutional comfort with a custodian. 3. Offshore centres can offer operational flexibility and neutrality, but many sophisticated clients prefer established, reputable regulatory regimes due to trust and enforceability considerations. 4. In the US, recent OCC guidance, evolving SEC posture, and new legislative efforts signal growing institutional acceptance of digital asset custody within traditional banking constraints. 5. The Digital Assets Act and political pressure to boost competitiveness are pushing the UK toward more certainty, especially on property rights and custody obligations. 6. Global custody remains fragmented with conflicting rules across jurisdictions (spanning property law, securities law, tax, and stablecoin regulation) make it challenging to deliver a unified global custody model similar to traditional finance. 7. Cross-border fraud, uncertain jurisdiction, and complex recovery routes highlight the gap between regulatory ambitions and practical investor protection.

America versus Europe versus Asia: The current state of digital asset custody law and regulation

PANEL 4

1. The market is overcrowded, prompting consolidation with many weaker providers exiting through failure, fraud, regulation, or M&A. 2. Traditional custodians and crypto-native firms are converging to meet institutions demand for a unified experience across asset types, combining banks’ regulatory rigour with startups’ tech models. 3. Stablecoins and tokenised products are accelerating ecosystem interoperability, enabling 24/7 settlement and linking custodians through new transaction flows. 4. Technology outpaces regulation, though progressive jurisdictions like UAE, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Switzerland are pushing forward through pilot regimes (sandboxes). 5. A single operating system is aspirational; key-based crypto custody and record-based traditional custody mean parallel systems will persist. 6. Large institutions are shifting toward an “ecosystem manager” model, partnering with niche specialists rather than building everything internally. 7. Future success hinges on interoperability, quantum-resilient security, and serving both large institutional flows and DeFi-native use cases.

Is the digital asset custody industry consolidating or converging?

PANEL 5