Custody Account

Overview

The account may correspond to a segregated blockchain wallet, a subaccount within an omnibus structure, an internal ledger position, or a combination of records and controlled addresses. The account name alone does not reveal whether assets are physically or on-chain segregated.

Account design determines authorized users, supported assets, transaction limits, reporting, fee treatment, and how ownership is evidenced. One client may have several custody accounts by legal entity, region, strategy, or storage tier. Conversely, one on-chain wallet may support balances for many custody accounts.

Clients should understand the link between account records and actual asset locations, including sub-custodians. Reconciliation should prove that client-level balances aggregate correctly to controlled holdings and obligations. Opening, changing, and closing the account require documented authority and retention of historical statements and transaction references.

For Custody Account, risks include key compromise, insider abuse, commingling, inaccurate books, unsupported tokens, provider insolvency, sub-custodian failure, blocked withdrawals, lost recovery material, and ambiguous liability. For Custody Account, controls should combine least privilege, separation of duties, verified destinations, asset segregation, limits, monitoring, and continuity tests.

Custody Account works through controlled onboarding, asset receipt, internal attribution, storage-tier assignment, authorization, signing or provider instruction, monitoring, withdrawal, reconciliation, reporting, and return or migration. For Custody Account, each handoff needs stable identifiers and an authoritative record of who approved and executed it.

Records for Custody Account should reconcile on-chain or provider balances with customer entitlements and the internal ledger by asset, network, account, and cutoff. For Custody Account, pending deposits, locked assets, staking, fees, conversions, forks, unsupported transfers, and manual adjustments require separate treatment and review.