Custody
The arrangement for safekeeping the private keys that control digital assets, and therefore for deciding who can move them.
Custody options range from leaving assets with an exchange, to appointing a specialist custodian that may be licensed as a trust company or qualified custodian, to holding keys directly. Institutional custodians combine cold storage, multiparty computation or multisignature key schemes, withdrawal policy engines, address whitelisting, insurance for defined loss events, and audited operating controls. Custody of digital assets differs fundamentally from securities custody: there is no registrar or transfer agent to correct a mistake, so a transfer signed with the right keys is generally irreversible whoever signed it. This is why questions about who holds the keys, how they are split, and what would happen in an insolvency are central to any institutional allocation.
En pratique
Fund structures that provide exposure to digital assets typically name a custodian in their documents and describe the storage arrangement in detail, because that arrangement is the main operational risk.
Le malentendu courant
Custody of digital assets means control of keys, not a bookkeeping entry that a provider can simply reverse when something goes wrong.