For five years, Standard Chartered has run its crypto custody through a venture-style arm called Zodia, and now the bank is pulling that business inside its main banking operation. The move puts crypto custody alongside Standard Chartered's regulated banking lines instead of in a separate venture vehicle.
Standard Chartered is acquiring Zodia Custody's core business after the bank's offer was accepted by Zodia's remaining shareholders, which include Northern Trust, Emirates NBD, SBI Holdings, and National Australia Bank. Deal terms weren't disclosed, and the transaction still needs regulatory approval.
The custody business - the part of Zodia that holds digital assets on behalf of institutional clients - moves inside Standard Chartered's Corporate and Investment Banking division. That sits next to the bank's spot bitcoin and ether trading desk, which launched in July 2025, and its existing crypto lending and tokenization work.
The other half of Zodia is staying outside the bank. Zodia Solutions, the white-label platform that lets other banks and fintechs offer crypto custody under their own brand, will keep operating as a stand-alone business under Standard Chartered's venture arm.
Standard Chartered also disclosed in May that its venture arm took a stake in crypto market maker GSR at a valuation above $1 billion, the firm's first outside investor since it was founded in 2013.
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Until recently, almost every big bank ran its crypto efforts through experimental units kept separate from the regulated business. The reason was simple - the rules were unclear, and nobody wanted to put a stable core franchise next to something that regulators might tear down later.
That's changing fast, with Europe's MiCA rules now live, Hong Kong licensing stablecoin issuers, and the US moving on the CLARITY Act. The legal ground has firmed up enough that banks are pulling crypto out of the lab and into the main building.
BNY Mellon launched a digital asset custody venture in Abu Dhabi this month, and Morgan Stanley applied for a national trust bank charter to custody and stake crypto. State Street is expanding its digital custody arm, and Standard Chartered's Zodia move is the latest piece of that pattern.
The custody market is the foundation under all of it, with industry estimates putting the global digital asset custody business above $1 trillion today and projections of $7 trillion by 2035.
Once the deal closes, Standard Chartered will have a full-stack crypto offering inside one regulated banking group, including custody, trading, lending, market making through its GSR stake, and stablecoins through its Singapore card and South Korea partnerships.
All of it sits inside one regulated bank instead of across separate venture entities.
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