- BNP Paribas may be on the verge of offering Bitcoin custody solutions
- The French banking giant is said to have struck a deal with custody solutions provider Metaco
- The deal would add the banking giant to Metaco’s growing list of institutional clients.
French banking giant BNP Paribas is allegedly entering the crypto custody space through a partnership with Swiss digital asset safekeeping firm Metaco, Coindesk reports. Metaco recently announced a deal with Citigroup and already offers Bitcoin custody solutions for a number of institutional entities, but this would be its biggest deal to date, and would highlight the desire for Bitcoin offerings even after its recent collapse and concerns over its future.
BNP Paribas Deal Would be Biggest Yet for Metaco
Coindesk cites three people with knowledge of the deal as the source, which would see BNP Paribas Securities Services, which has almost $13 trillion in assets under custody, add Bitcoin to its cache of supported assets. Neither BNP Paribas or Metaco has commented on the news, but it wouldn’t be a surprise for such a collaboration to have taken place.
Metaco recently agreed a custody deal with another French bank, Societe Generale, which comes off the back of another such partnership with another banking giant, Citigroup. In the past few months it has also announced deals with BBVA , Zodia Custody, DBS and UnionBank Philippines.
Bitcoin Gets Boost at Trying Time
The Societe Generale and Citigroup deals are focused on security tokens, which are yet to really take off in a meaningful way, such as tokenized versions of stocks or other financial instruments, while Metaco would appear to be working with BNP Paribas on a purely cryptocurrency deal, and Bitcoin especially.
Were the rumours to be true it would put a huge feather in Metaco’s cap and would certainly position it very near the top of the tree when it comes to institutional adoption. It would also be good news for Bitcoin, which is at the start of a bear market and has lawmakers in both Europe and the U.S. trying to shut it down.
