Ripple says digital asset custody could unlock $80 million to $100 million in profit for a typical regional bank, according to a new report commissioned by the company and written by Boston Consulting Group.
How Banks Could Capture That $100 Million
BCG wrote in its October 2026 report that custody has shifted from simple vault-style safekeeping into an operational layer banks can build entire businesses around.
For an illustrative bank holding $200 billion to $300 billion in assets, the firm broke down where that profit opportunity comes from:
- Collateral mobility: $35 million to $45 million, from freeing up liquidity and collateral more efficiently
- Crypto brokerage: $20 million, from trading fees
- Tokenized money-market funds: $10 million to $15 million, from fees on holdings and transfers
- Cross-border payments: $10 million, from lower processing and liquidity costs
- Secured lending: $5 million to $10 million, from credit margins on loans backed by digital assets
BCG called collateral mobility the single largest driver, since faster settlement and round-the-clock availability keep assets working instead of sitting idle.
The firm cautioned this is an illustrative model built on BCG’s project experience, not a guaranteed outcome or a forecast of actual custody-fee revenue.
Why More Than 30% of Digital Assets Already Sit in Institutional Custody
The report estimated that roughly one-third of all digital assets, excluding lost or assumed-lost holdings, now sit in institutional custody arrangements outside exchanges.
BCG pegged the total addressable custody market, combining exchange balances, self-custody, wallet-as-a-service, and managed custody, at $1.4 trillion to $1.6 trillion as of July 2026.
Three forces are driving that growth, according to the report: tokenized real-world assets, stablecoins and tokenized deposits, and crypto spot ETFs.
US spot Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) ETFs alone held $91.7 billion as of April 2026, with roughly 84% of that custodied through Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN).
Why the Report Stops Short of Making an XRP Case
BCG positioned Ripple as one of three emerging custody provider strategies, describing the company as a vertically integrated player combining custody, its RLUSD (CRYPTO: RLUSD) stablecoin, payments infrastructure and treasury services under one roof.
Rivals like Fireblocks and Copper compete as liquidity aggregators, while firms like Dfns and Taurus embed modular custody technology directly into banks’ existing systems.
The report’s case for Ripple’s business is more direct than its case for XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) itself.
BCG offers no model connecting custody market growth to XRP token demand, holdings or price, and the document contains no XRP price target.
Since Ripple commissioned the research, the report’s framing of Ripple’s institutional positioning should be read with that sponsorship in mind.
Image: Shutterstock
Recent Comments