Another traditional financial giant is taking action. Recently, the leading global custodian bank, State Street, officially announced the launch of its digital asset platform, planning to introduce tokenized money market funds, ETFs, stablecoins, and deposit products. What does this mean? From being the behind-the-scenes manager of trillions of dollars in assets, it is transforming into a direct issuer of on-chain assets.

This is not the first time State Street has ventured into the tokenization space. They previously collaborated with Galaxy Digital to issue tokenized funds, building a certain foundation of experience. But this platform launch is clearly different in scale and ambition — not only to issue various tokenized products, but also to consider providing crypto asset custody services in the future, ultimately forming a complete "issuance + custody" ecosystem.

Why do this? Simply put, to meet customer needs and ride the wave. The trend of asset tokenization has already taken shape, and traditional financial institutions can no longer hide behind the scenes collecting custody fees. Competitors like BlackRock and Fidelity are already in action, and State Street’s high-profile entry essentially marks a shift from passive service to active participation — both to satisfy the increasing demand from institutions for on-chain asset allocation and to secure a favorable position in the digital asset ecosystem.

From a broader perspective, this reflects an undercurrent in the entire financial industry: traditional custody giants are no longer content with playing the role of "gatekeeper." They have capital, credit, and technological expertise; why not directly participate in asset issuance? State Street’s move may indicate that more traditional financial institutions will gradually cross this boundary.