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perspectives · August 13, 2026

Banks Keep Pushing Into Crypto

Galaxy

This article originally appeared in GAM's Monthly Market Commentary. Subscribe to get timely insights delivered to your inbox every month.

The "blockchain, not bitcoin" refrain has run among TradFi participants since crypto’s first mainstream cycle more than a decade ago, when institutions widely acknowledged the appeal of a digital ledger even as they dismissed the asset class. A handful of banks explored institutional use cases such as collateral mobility and trade-finance collateral management, but most projects stayed small and in the proof-of-concept stage. In 2026, we are seeing financial institutions advancing on both sides of the stack: bringing traditional assets onchain to improve settlement, collateral mobility and distribution, while also expanding clients’ access to native cryptoassets.

DTCC has emerged as one of the clearest examples. After its DTC subsidiary received an SEC no-action letter in December authorizing it to tokenize certain DTC-custodied securities, DTCC conducted a large-scale production initiative on July 15 in which DTC-held securities were converted into tokens and used in live transactions. More than 30 firms participated across collateral pledges, securities lending, U.S. Treasury and repo delivery-versus-payment, equity DVP and delivery-versus-delivery, token transfers and central-counterparty margin workflows. The transactions ran across both Canton, billed as a public network (some dispute this), and DTCC’s private network, built on the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust’s Besu (formerly Hyperledger Besu), reflecting a deliberate multichain strategy ahead of the service’s planned October full launch.

BNY pushed the same transition further into fund servicing on July 29 with the launch of its Digital Transfer Agency. The platform is designed to support digitally native funds across multiple jurisdictions and blockchains, integrating tokenization, distribution, and custody while allowing the legal representation of a fund’s books and records to exist on a public blockchain. Investment manager Baillie Gifford is using the capability for its newly launched U.K.-regulated tokenized fund, while BNY Investments Dreyfus and BlackRock are expected to use it for forthcoming products. BNY’s broader transfer-agency business services approximately $8.6 trillion of assets across more than 7.6 million investor accounts, giving the digital platform a significant base from which to scale. (To be clear: the full $8.6 trillion is not being transferred onchain at launch.)

Apart from leveraging distributed ledger technology, banks are also moving on the client-facing side: On July 16, Morgan Stanley’s ETRADE completed the rollout of spot trading in bitcoin, ether, and solana, allowing eligible clients to buy, sell and hold the assets through linked Zero Hash accounts within the ETRADE experience. The following day, Bank of America named Sonali Theisen head of its global digital assets platform while she retained her role leading global fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) electronic trading and markets strategic investments. Although the appointment did not coincide with a product launch, the organizational structure indicates that digital-asset infrastructure is being placed alongside core electronic-trading and markets functions rather than isolated inside an innovation lab.

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