Why corporate crypto custody isn’t just a banking problem

Across Europe, corporate interest in digital assets has moved beyond experimentation. Treasury teams are assessing stablecoins for settlement, boards are approving limited balance sheet exposure, and legal departments are being asked questions that did not exist five years ago.

That assumption is increasingly being tested inside large organisations. As European firms explore this terrain in 2026, custody is becoming a corporate design question rather than a default banking decision.

The custody assumption in Europe

Historically, European corporations have relied on banks to intermediate risk. Cash, securities, and derivatives sit within familiar frameworks shaped by decades of regulation and supervision. Crypto assets, however, arrived through a different channel, one driven by software rather than balance sheets.

The introduction of MiCA has reinforced confidence that regulated custody must mean bank-led custody. Yet the framework also enables non-bank providers to operate as qualified custodians when they meet strict standards around governance, audits, and insurance. That nuance matters because it expands the set of viable options without weakening compliance.

For multinational firms, the question is not whether custody is regulated, but whether the model aligns with how assets are actually used. When digital assets support treasury operations, tokenised workflows, or internal liquidity management, static custody can become a bottleneck rather than a safeguard.

Operational control versus intermediaries

Inside corporations, digital assets are often tied to operational decisions. Moving funds to support a transaction, rebalancing exposure, or interacting with on-chain infrastructure may require responsiveness measured in minutes. Traditional banking custody, built for deliberate pacing and manual checks, can struggle in that environment.

This has pushed attention toward technology-led custody platforms that prioritise internal control while maintaining institutional safeguards. Distributed key management, policy-based approvals, and rapid execution from secure environments have shifted expectations of what “safe” looks like in practice. In this context, even discussions around tooling, such as teams exploring options like the best BNB wallet, are less about speculation and more about how operational access is structured. Such wallets combine secure storage with operational flexibility, allowing corporate teams to manage digital assets efficiently while maintaining full control and compliance.

What matters is not the asset itself, but who controls the keys, how decisions are authorised, and how seamlessly custody integrates with corporate systems. For many firms, those questions sit closer to IT and treasury than to external banking relationships.

Risk management beyond regulation

Risk in corporate crypto custody extends beyond regulatory compliance. Counterparty exposure, operational resilience, and insolvency risk all surface quickly when assets are held outside traditional balance sheets. Legal leaders are increasingly focused on whether custody arrangements are bankruptcy-remote and how liabilities would be treated in extreme scenarios.

Guidance aimed at institutional adopters has highlighted this shift, noting that governance frameworks must account for technology dependencies as much as legal ones, a point explored in a recent family office guide that also resonates with corporate treasurers. The emphasis is on aligning custody structure with the firm’s overall risk architecture, not outsourcing responsibility to the most familiar name.

This is where non-bank custodians have gained traction. By offering clear segregation of assets, audited controls, and transparent operating models, they allow corporations to manage crypto risk in ways that mirror internal risk management practices rather than external financial intermediation.

Balancing control and accountability

Ultimately, custody decisions force corporations to balance control with accountability. Too much autonomy without oversight creates governance concerns. Too much intermediation can undermine the efficiencies that made digital assets attractive in the first place.

Comparative analysis of institutional custodians shows how diverse these models have become, with differences in governance design often outweighing brand recognition, as illustrated in a recent custodian comparison table. For boards and executives, this shifts the conversation from “bank or not” to “which structure fits our operational reality”.

Legal teams are central to this recalibration. As corporate legal leaders reassess digital asset strategies, many are weighing fiduciary duties against the practical need to integrate custody into internal technology stacks, a tension examined in detail within recent thinking on corporate legal strategy. The outcome is rarely binary.

In Europe’s evolving digital asset landscape, custody is no longer just a banking problem. It is an organisational one, shaped by how corporations define control, manage risk, and hold themselves accountable in systems that move at software speed rather than institutional pace.

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