Famous US bank will work with bitcoin

The oldest US bank Bank of New York Mellon Corp. on Thursday announced that in the interests of its management clientsassets will begin to store bitcoin and carry out transactions with it, as well as with other cryptocurrencies. Writes about this The Wall Street Journal.

Over time, BNY Mellon will allowdigital assets in the same system with more traditional instruments, including government bonds and technology stocks. The discussion of the relevant plans is already underway.

“Digital assets are becoming part of the mainstream,” said Roman Regelman, head of asset services and digital business at BNY Mellon.

As The Wall Street Journal notes, forThe introduction of digital currencies into their infrastructure by traditional banks needs to do a lot of work in terms of eliminating the risks of a regulatory and legal nature, as well as stability. However, the continued growth of the cryptocurrency market attracts more and more asset managers, hedge funds and other institutional players. According to Regelman, such clients started asking BNY Mellon to support digital assets just like any other in their possession.

Fidelity Investments back in October 2018announced its intention to start storing and exchanging bitcoin for ether, and a year later received a license to conduct related activities in New York. However, BNY Mellon's announcement differs from Fidelity's activity, as this is the first time that one of the largest custodian banks has unveiled a roadmap to equalize cryptocurrencies with all other assets.

It is assumed that access to cryptocurrenciesBNY Mellon customers will receive services by the end of the year. The bank expects that they will transfer their digital assets to its vaults from other places, but so far it is difficult to estimate the possible amount of proceeds. Regelman noted that until that time, asset managers had to solve similar problems with the help of third-party custodian services.

In addition, BNY Mellon has already formed a team ofexecutives who will look for opportunities to integrate digital assets into all areas of the bank's activities. Regelman expects the full process of introducing cryptocurrencies into traditional Wall Street infrastructure will take another 3-5 years.

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