BNY Mellon Partners with Galaxy to Integrate Staking into Institutional Digital Asset Custody
BNY Mellon has announced a strategic partnership with Galaxy Digital to integrate staking services into its digital asset custody platform, providing institutional clients with a unified service for custody, staking, and reporting.
The two parties will combine BNY's custody, accounting, tax, and client reporting capabilities with Galaxy's experience in PoS networks and validator node operations to offer institutional clients controlled budgeting, segregated custody, and yield-generating digital asset participation paths.
This solution is subject to regulatory review, and BNY and Galaxy plan to allow eligible institutional clients to receive both custody and staking rewards under the same service model, reducing operational friction across service providers.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
This move by BNY is not just about adding a staking feature; it is advancing institutional digital asset business from "holding custody" to "earning interest on holdings": it first opened custody for Bitcoin and Ethereum in 2022, and now integrates staking into the same platform, indicating that Wall Street's underlying logic has shifted from "can we hold it" to "can we generate returns".
Similar cases can be compared to Standard Chartered's promotion of Zodia Custody, as well as Galaxy's own collaborations with Fireblocks, BitGo, and Zodia: institutional custody and yield services are transitioning from "multiple independent vendors stitched together" to "a single entry point with unified risk control", which will compress the space for decentralized service providers in the middle layer.
In terms of capital pathways, Galaxy's role is not just as a staking service provider, but as a design partner and validator infrastructure supplier; this means it is selling not just yield, but the ability for institutions to participate in PoS that is auditable, tax-compliant, and risk-controlled, akin to upgrading "mining pools of the mining era" to a "Wall Street version of the validation layer".
Essentially, this represents a reconstruction of the industry chain: traditional custody banks are incorporating PoS yields into the asset service chain, as institutional clients want to obtain on-chain yields without bearing the complexities of private keys, nodes, and compliance, thus custody and staking are packaged into the same financial product.
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