Banking blueprint for the crypto world

How banks compete in the digital world has forever changed due to growing market acceptance of cryptoassets, the rapid advancement of cryptocurrency technology, and the at-scale participation of financial institutions in the crypto market.

This paper aims to help business and technology leaders in the banking industry capitalize on opportunities in the growing crypto market by evolving operations and delivering new crypto services and solutions that are trusted, transparent, and auditable. We explore three high-potential, innovative crypto applications and the key technical and operational building blocks that underlie a successful crypto infrastructure for today’s leading banking institutions.

In this paper, we also identify the seven key pieces that should constitute a bank’s operational infrastructure in order to deliver innovative and competitive cryptobased services. We believe evolving capabilities and business models in the key areas where crypto activities touch current operations will help banks seize the most promising digital services business opportunities in the expanding crypto market.

The crypto advantage

Proponents of cryptoassets say the currencies have the potential to solve some of the stickiest problems in the broad financial ecosystem and create new levels of openness, trust and scale.

• Accessibility: Cryptoassets help create a more open financial system, providing an alternative to traditional asset classes and democratizing financial access to a wider range of customers on a peer-to-peer network of exchange.
• Efficiency: Cryptoassets remove intermediaries, fees and other roadblocks to large transactions, creating a faster and less expensive global payment network. Open data on the blockchain allows infrastructure to automate and markets to stay open, always.
• Transparency: As native digital assets, cryptoassets provide increased transparency throughout the asset lifecycle. Public blockchain ledgers make it possible to independently verify and audit accounts and transactions, bringing real-time understanding and greater assurance to custody and settlements.