Swiss Crypto Custody Tracker: Assets Under Custody 2025

The Swiss Custody Landscape: Scale and Significance

Switzerland has quietly become one of the world’s most important centres for institutional digital asset custody. The combination of a robust legal framework — specifically the Federal Act on the Adaptation of Federal Law to Developments in Distributed Ledger Technology, in force since August 2021 — with a concentration of FINMA-supervised banking institutions has created a custody ecosystem that rivals New York and Hong Kong for institutional-grade digital asset protection.

Total Swiss crypto assets under custody are estimated at CHF 30 to 40 billion as of early 2026. This figure encompasses assets held by FINMA-licensed banks, securities dealers, and regulated financial intermediaries. It excludes self-custody by Swiss-domiciled individuals and corporate treasuries, which would add materially to the aggregate. The CHF 30–40 billion estimate represents assets where a professional Swiss-supervised intermediary holds custody on behalf of institutional or qualified private clients.

This tracker provides the most comprehensive available analysis of the Swiss institutional custody market, covering the principal custodians, their technology architectures, regulatory status, and competitive dynamics.

Swiss Custodians: Assets Under Custody Table

Methodology note: Taurus and Metaco figures represent the estimated total of digital assets held on their platforms across all Swiss and international bank clients, including assets not directly domiciled in Switzerland. Direct custodian AuC figures reflect Swiss-entity holdings only where determinable. All figures are estimates as of Q1 2026 based on company disclosures, industry research, and analytical modelling.

Custody Technology: HSM, MPC, and Multi-Signature Compared

The three principal custody architectures employed by Swiss custodians each offer distinct security and operational trade-offs. Understanding these differences is essential for institutional investors evaluating custody arrangements.

Hardware Security Modules (HSM)

Hardware security modules are physical computing devices that perform cryptographic operations and key storage in a tamper-resistant environment. Keys generated within an HSM cannot be extracted; the device is designed to self-destruct or lock down if tampered with. HSMs are the foundational technology of traditional financial infrastructure — the same devices protect the private keys of payment card networks and banking systems.

In crypto custody, HSMs provide strong physical security guarantees. Sygnum Bank’s custody infrastructure relies substantially on HSMs, with geographic distribution of key material across Swiss data centres providing resilience against single-point failure. The limitation of HSM-only custody is operational complexity: signing transactions requires physical interaction with secure facilities, creating latency challenges for high-frequency institutional trading clients.

Multi-Party Computation (MPC)

Multi-party computation represents the most significant technological evolution in crypto custody over the past five years. MPC allows private key signing to be distributed across multiple parties — for example, three of five key-share holders must participate in a signing ceremony — without any single party ever holding the complete private key. Unlike multi-signature wallets (which require multiple on-chain signatures and are therefore blockchain-specific), MPC operates at the cryptographic layer and is compatible with any blockchain architecture.

Taurus Group’s PROTECT platform and Copper Technologies’ ClearLoop infrastructure are both built on MPC foundations. The advantages for institutional clients are significant: MPC enables programmatic approval workflows, integration with institutional-grade access controls, and real-time transaction authorisation without physical key ceremonies. For custodians managing thousands of institutional client accounts with frequent transaction requirements, MPC is operationally transformative.

Multi-Signature Wallets

Multi-signature wallet arrangements — where a transaction requires cryptographic signatures from multiple private keys before execution — remain widely used, particularly for Bitcoin custody. Bitcoin Suisse and several Swiss private banks still use multi-sig arrangements for portions of their custody infrastructure, particularly for cold storage of long-duration holdings.

Multi-sig’s limitation is its blockchain specificity. Each blockchain implementation has its own multi-sig standard; a Bitcoin multi-sig arrangement cannot natively protect Ethereum assets. This makes multi-sig less practical for custodians managing diversified digital asset portfolios across dozens of blockchain networks.

Modern institutional custodians typically employ hybrid architectures combining HSMs for key material protection, MPC for transaction authorisation workflows, and cold storage multi-sig for long-duration reserves. AMINA Bank’s custody architecture exemplifies this hybrid approach.

The DLT Act Insolvency Protection Advantage

Switzerland’s DLT Act introduced a structural advantage for Swiss custodians that has no direct equivalent in US, UK, or most EU jurisdictions. Article 242a of the Swiss Bankruptcy Act (SchKG) provides that digital assets held in custody are segregated from a custodian’s bankruptcy estate and returned to clients in insolvency proceedings without requiring clients to become unsecured creditors.

This is not merely theoretical. The collapse of FTX in November 2022 demonstrated catastrophically what happens to clients of crypto custodians in jurisdictions without explicit insolvency protection: FTX customers became unsecured creditors of a bankrupt estate, waiting years for partial recovery. Under Swiss law, clients of FINMA-licensed custodians would, by contrast, have their digital assets returned directly — provided the custodian had maintained proper segregation, which Swiss licensing requirements mandate.

The DLT Act insolvency protection therefore provides a genuine, legally enforceable advantage that Swiss custodians can credibly offer institutional clients who have fiduciary obligations to their own investors. For pension fund trustees, family office managers, and asset management CIOs evaluating custody risk, the Swiss legal framework represents a material risk reduction relative to offshore alternatives.

Institutional Demand Drivers

Bitcoin ETP Collateral Management

The growth of Bitcoin exchange-traded products on SIX Swiss Exchange has created substantial incremental demand for Swiss custody services. Physical Bitcoin ETPs require that underlying Bitcoin holdings be maintained in regulated custody, creating permanent AuC growth proportional to ETP AuM. 21Shares, the Zurich-headquartered ETP issuer with over 50 crypto ETP products, has driven significant custody mandates to Swiss custodians as its global AuM has grown.

Family Office Digital Asset Allocation

Switzerland’s approximately 1,200 to 1,500 family offices — managing an estimated total of CHF 300 to 500 billion in assets — have increasingly added digital asset allocations over the 2022–2025 period. Conservative initial allocations of 1 to 3 per cent of AuM translate to CHF 3 to 15 billion in potential digital asset custody demand from this segment alone. Swiss private banks with FINMA-licensed digital asset custody have been the primary beneficiaries, with Maerki Baumann and Cornèr Bank both marketing crypto custody services explicitly to family office clients.

Corporate Treasury Bitcoin Holdings

Following MicroStrategy’s pioneering corporate Bitcoin treasury strategy, a small but growing number of Swiss corporates and holding companies have accumulated Bitcoin on balance sheet. These entities require professional custody arrangements that satisfy their own audit and governance requirements — a natural mandate for FINMA-licensed custodians.

The Taurus and Metaco B2B Custody Infrastructure Ecosystem

Two Swiss-domiciled entities have shaped the custody technology landscape far beyond their own direct AuC figures: Taurus Group in Geneva and Metaco (now fully acquired by Ripple in 2023) with its Swiss origins.

Taurus PROTECT is the institutional custody platform that powers the digital asset operations of multiple Swiss cantonal banks, Arab Bank Switzerland, Crédit Mutuel, CACEIS, and other institutional financial entities. When a Swiss cantonal bank offers digital asset custody to its clients, it is frequently running on Taurus infrastructure. The Taurus model is B2B SaaS for banking: the bank remains the regulated custodian, but the technology layer — key management, transaction authorisation, compliance workflows — is provided by Taurus.

Metaco’s Harmonize platform plays an analogous role globally, with particularly strong penetration among Tier 1 banks. Standard Chartered, BBVA, and several other major international banks are Metaco clients. Ripple’s 2023 acquisition of Metaco for $250 million cemented the platform’s role in the global banking infrastructure landscape. Metaco’s Swiss origins — founded in Lausanne in 2015 — remain significant for the platform’s relationship with FINMA-supervised institutions.

Competitive Dynamics: Swiss vs Global Custodians

Swiss custodians face competition from four principal global players: Coinbase Custody (US), Fidelity Digital Assets (US), BitGo (US), and Anchorage Digital (US). Each has a distinct positioning.

Coinbase Custody holds the largest custody AuC globally, estimated at over $100 billion, reflecting Coinbase’s institutional custody relationships built through its exchange business. Coinbase Custody Trust Company is a New York State-chartered trust, providing regulatory standing, but lacks the insolvency protection that Swiss law provides. Its DeFi and on-chain capability is strong, a competitive advantage for clients seeking staking and protocol interaction.

Fidelity Digital Assets benefits from Fidelity’s institutional credibility but offers a more limited asset universe and geographic footprint than Swiss custodians. Its US-centric regulatory framework creates friction for European institutional mandates.

BitGo was the original institutional crypto custodian and retains a strong multi-custody offering, but its long-running acquisition saga — the failed Goldman Sachs deal, subsequent SPAC process — has created strategic uncertainty. BitGo holds a New York trust charter and South Dakota trust charter but lacks the banking-grade regulatory standing of Swiss custodians.

The Swiss differentiation lies in the combination of banking-grade regulation, DLT Act insolvency protection, and the ability to integrate digital asset custody within comprehensive private banking relationships. For European and Middle Eastern institutional mandates in particular, Swiss custodians hold a structural advantage that US trust-charter custodians cannot easily replicate.

Outlook 2025–2026

Custody AuC in Switzerland is expected to grow from the current CHF 30–40 billion base to an estimated CHF 60–80 billion by end-2026, driven by:

• Continued Bitcoin ETP AuM growth on SIX and BX Swiss
• Pension fund allocation initiations under revised BVG guidance
• Cantonal bank rollouts of digital asset custody services via Taurus and Metaco infrastructure
• Inflow of European institutional mandates seeking Swiss custody quality with DLT Act protection
• Growth in tokenised real-world assets requiring custody across Sygnum’s Desygnate, SDX, and the broader Swiss tokenisation ecosystem

The central competitive question for Swiss custodians is whether the DLT Act advantage will drive sufficient institutional inflow to sustain the premium fee structures that banking-grade custody requires. Evidence from 2025 strongly suggests it will — the institutional digital asset custody market is structurally underserved, and Switzerland’s combination of legal clarity, regulatory quality, and banking infrastructure makes it uniquely positioned to capture the institutional mandate at scale.

Donovan Vanderbilt is a contributing editor at ZUG TRADING. Assets under custody figures are estimates derived from company disclosures, industry research, and analytical modelling. This article is informational and does not constitute investment or trading advice.