BNY CEO Robin Vince fielded multiple questions about the bank’s digital asset strategy during Thursday’s third-quarter earnings call, outlining how the world’s largest custodian views blockchain technology as both an operational enhancement and revenue opportunity rather than a competitive threat. Regarding stablecoins, the bank can provide services to stablecoin issuers rather than necessarily issuing one itself.

The custody giant looks after $57.8 trillion in assets. Vince sees blockchain as enabling round-the-clock transactions and improved collateral mobility across financial markets. BNY was the first U.S. globally systemically important bank authorized to provide crypto custody and invested in digital asset infrastructure firm Fireblocks in 2021.

“We still have some of our ledgers which were quill and ink back in the day, then printing it, and then it was computers,” Vince told analysts. “And now we see this as a promise for certain types of assets and certain types of transactions as being a new way of being able to record, improving the mobility of assets, improving the efficiency of recording transactions.”

The bank already serves as fund custodian and transfer agent for Circle’s USDC reserve fund, provides custody for SocGen FORGE’s dollar stablecoin and Ripple’s RLUSD. It recently partnered with Goldman Sachs and its blockchain platform to enable money market fund tokenization.

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