The Next Banking Revolution: Regulated Banks, Brokers and Credit Unions Can Now Offer Cryptocurrency Accounts

The convergence of cryptocurrency and traditional banking is the first step towards a fundamental reshaping of the global financial system, and financial institutions face a critical choice: Lead the transformation or risk being left behind.

First Steps

For years, cryptocurrency exchanges have captured customer relationships and financial activity that traditionally belonged to banks. As consumers and businesses moved assets into the digital economy, banks often remained on the sidelines.

That could be about to change. The actions of the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) have made it easier for Banks, Brokers and Credit Unions to allow their customers to hold crypto currencies in their accounts.

This represents the initial, formative overlapping and integration of decentralized finance (DeFi) with traditional finance (TradFi) where there is the potential of wholly new products, services and the transformation of the financial services industry. While the initial developments deserve applause, there are still significant challenges for the most extrapolated aspirations for digital finance.

A Global Race for Financial Leadership

President Donald Trump has established an ambitious goal of making the United States the “crypto capital of the world.” His administration has advanced policies supporting digital asset innovation and removing barriers to adoption.

However, the United States faces intense international competition. Switzerland, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, and the European Union are establishing regulatory frameworks and attracting financial institutions developing digital asset services. The competition extends beyond cryptocurrency markets. Nations are positioning themselves to attract investment, create jobs, and establish leadership in the next generation of financial infrastructure.

The Administration’s focus has been predominantly towards crypto currencies and less to the tokenization of real world assets (RWA’s) e.g. the Genius Act focused on Stablecoins and the Clarity Act on regulating crypto currencies. Although the goal is to make the United States competitive, there will be a need for global legislative and regulatory harmonization to take full advantage of the 24/7, asset agnostic and real-time capabilities of distributed ledger or blockchain technology.

Regulatory Barriers Are Falling

In 2020, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency confirmed that national banks could provide cryptocurrency account services. However, regulatory uncertainty, supervisory restrictions, and accounting burdens discouraged widespread adoption. Beginning in 2025, significant changes occurred. The SEC eliminated major bank reserve and broker restrictive obstacles, while the OCC reaffirmed national banks’ authority to hold cryptocurrencies in their customer accounts, facilitate transactions, and utilize third-party service providers. These changes have created a clearer pathway for regulated financial institutions to explore and expand digital asset services, subject to applicable regulatory and risk-management requirements.

The Economic Opportunity Is Enormous

Cryptocurrency accounts in regulated and fiduciary institutions could open significant new revenue opportunities through custody fees, transactions, lending, and other digital asset services.

Consider a credit union member who transfers money to a cryptocurrency exchange to purchase Bitcoin. The credit union may lose deposits and potentially surrender portions of the customer relationship to a competing financial platform. Now imagine that same member purchasing, safeguarding, and managing cryptocurrency through their existing credit union. The institution could retain the customer relationship, generate new revenue, and potentially provide additional financial services.

For community banks and credit unions, this could be particularly transformative. Rather than surrendering the digital asset market to major banks and exchanges, smaller institutions could compete using technology integrated with their existing banking infrastructure.

A Major Milestone: Coin2Core Achieves BMM Level 4

One of the greatest barriers to digital asset adoption has been the lack of confidence in the maturity and trustworthiness of emerging technologies. A significant milestone occurred in September 2026 when DaLand’s Coin2Core became the first blockchain solution to achieve Level 4 under the Government Blockchain Association’s Blockchain Maturity Model (BMM).

Coin2Core enables banks and credit unions to integrate cryptocurrency accounts and transactions with existing core banking systems, with the potential to bring digital asset services to other financial institutions.

The independent BMM assessment provides evidence of Coin2Core’s operational maturity within its assessed scope, helping financial institutions evaluate technology risks and readiness. This achievement demonstrates how independently assessed blockchain solutions can help bridge traditional banking and digital assets, accelerating the transformation of financial services.

The Cost of Inaction

Cryptocurrency custody involves significant security, operational, and regulatory risks. Financial institutions must approach adoption responsibly. However, aggressive exploration does not mean reckless implementation. It means evaluating opportunities, understanding risks, identifying qualified technology providers, and preparing for an evolving financial marketplace. Banks and credit unions have spent generations building trusted financial relationships. They now have an opportunity to extend those relationships into the digital economy.

The Future of Digital Banking, Treasury Services and Capital Markets Requirements

While the offering of crypto currency accounts within regulated and fiduciary institutions is a major first step for a better digital economy, there are still significant challenges for the subsequent evolution and implementation.

The capabilities and transactional offerings of the DeFi world mirror the full capabilities of retail finance today; the challenge is the public blockchain infrastructure is wholly unsuitable for the regulated and fiduciary institutions and the functional requirements of the institutional treasury services and captial markets. Also, the current public/private enterprise blockchains rely on smart contract algorithms rather than accounting obligations on-chain to record future-dated obligations which are critical for lending, collateralized financing, netting, credit and risk management. Even pending trades (intra-day or longer) or accrued interest, dividends and corporate actions cannot be controlled and recorded as needed. The industry is only now taking its first limited steps in transacting tokenized (fiat currency) deposits.

The DeFi world can survive with its own infrastructure capabilities mainly outside the regulations but there are functional, compliance and control innovations needed for traditional finance world to transform digitally completely.

The Potential Waiting for the Next Innovations

Just as regulation, functionality and technological innovation has lead to regulated crypto currency accounts, the traditional finance world is exploring, building and implementing new innovations. The new regulatory, functional and technological innovations, still in their infancy, will be able to bring the 24/7, asset agnostic, real-time, cheap access to the traditional finance. The goal is still to tokenize the whole industry, create innovations in fractional ownership, provide banking and investments to the unbanked and create liquidity and transparency to the industry while implanting better controls to manage risk and stop fraud, waste and abuse.

The Government Blockchain Association’s Blockchain Maturity Model (BMM) was designed with these future innovations in mind, so it is ready now to assess the innovations of the future to provably realize the potential of digital assets and markets.