America's Oldest Bank, the First to Crypto

in LeoFinancelast year

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Up until now, we've yet to see any traditional banks offer services for crypto specifically. We've seen platforms offer custodial services for "accredited investors" and the like, but nothing widely available that would really serve a purpose at all. All of this changed today, October 11th, 2022 when BNY Mellon announced that they would offer cryptocurrency custody services alongside their traditional banking offerings. This is something that has yet to be offered by any actual bank, and it's something that is going to attract a lot of users to the crypto space in my opinion.

The major barrier to entry for a lot of regular people is that they don't understand cryptocurrency, nor do they care to. Your average user really doesn't care about owning their private keys and actually controlling their money. They care about having their money "safely" stored by a bank and being able to use said bank account for things like paying bills in a very convenient way. If they are not already into cryptocurrency in some way, they will likely continue to use their traditional finances in the same way they always do. The way it works and is easy.

When their bank says "hey, we have this new cryptocurrency service and you don't need any technical knowledge to use it", people might turn their heads. The moment your average elderly user finds out they have to write down their private key or recovery phrase... you can forget it when it comes to them actually using the service.

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When you strip it down to the core, a lot of potential users of the service will likely be people only using it to speculate on fluctuating crypto prices. This is fine, because a number of people that use the service will start to educate themselves about what they're actually interacting with. This is great, because in my opinion, the moment our moms and grandmas are able to use cryptocurrency is when true mass adoption occurs. Until then, it remains a mystery to the non-tech-savvy user and will continue on that path.

Applications like Splinterlands are pushing these boundaries in a way that eliminates the complicated shit from the equation. This is truly the only way to onboard the masses onto a blockchain or ever think about introducing them to cryptocurrency. The majority of Splinterlands players even realize they have a Hive wallet, and they don't have to right away. When they decide they're ready to go down the rabbit hole, it's there for them. Until then, they're able to use the Hive blockchain to play a great game without dealing with any of it.

A bank like BNY Mellon is one of the best bets we have for introducing the average person to cryptocurrencies. Why? Because of the longevity of the business, mainly. The amount of assets under management matters less in my opinion, because the over 200 years of trust is something that can really be taken into account when considering an investment.

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Being America's oldest bank doesn't come with a light weighting. When people consider where to place their assets or funds they look at the history of the platform (or at least they should). BNY Mellon has 238 years of trust built from managing over $43 trillion in assets worldwide, which is an astonishing amount. Consider cryptocurrency being presented to users with that amount of wealth across the board. If even 1% of those users consider placing any amount of money into cryptocurrency, we have a large amount of new money coming in.

Would that amount of new money entered the space without a simple custody solution that requires no experience? Highly doubtful. We need innovation like this to drive any kind of true adoption of cryptocurrency, blockchain, and web3 technology. The kind of innovation that makes you forget or never even know you're interacting with something different than what's commercially available. Only then will we see true mass adoption. Until then, we keep building.

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Article written by: @l337m45732 AKA 0xNifty.nft

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Interesting news! I wonder, how will these services look for average bank customers? I imagine one would be able to buy cryptocurrencies from the bank as an investment and they would hold them for you? This bring an interesting topic of discussion: if the banks offer this service, will they be responsible to educate people about the use of cryptocurrencies? (Private wallets, transfers, gas fees, etc...). Will it work similar as with the current crypto exchanges like Binance?

Right now the only option I have to invest in cryptocurrencies in my bank is buying an index fund that is related to Bitcoin but that does not make me own any crypto itself. So this is definitely a cool development!

I said a few years ago when maxis were claiming that bankers are trying to "destroy Bitcoin" that it's not going to happen. These money-making entities will not waste the opportunity of making even more money by getting involved in crypto custody. In ten or more years from now, they'll probably even have their own DeFi.

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