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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Before using a crypto prime broker, an institution should identify every legal entity and service in the arrangement; verify relevant permissions; establish who controls, holds, and owes it each asset; assess custody, counterparty, credit, and operational risks; review independent assurance; and confirm contractual remedies and exit options. A prime-broker relationship can bundle execution, custody, settlement, financing, and cash services across multiple entities, so assess the actual structure—not just the brand—and validate it with current documents, official registers, and institution-specific legal advice.
What due diligence should institutions perform before using a crypto prime broker?
Start with the institution’s intended use: the assets, venues, products, jurisdictions, settlement methods, and any financing or other services it expects to use. Then map the entities and obligations involved in each step. The same provider brand may represent several affiliates, while a permission held by one entity does not establish that another affiliate is authorised for the service in question. The SEC’s staff FAQ and Coinbase’s provider-authored custody documentation illustrate why the legal and service structure needs to be examined directly; neither determines the status or suitability of a particular arrangement.
Build the review around evidence: executed or proposed contracts, official regulatory registers, custody and control descriptions, financial information, independent control reports, and a transaction-flow walkthrough. Requirements depend on the asset, activity, entity, and jurisdiction. Obtain legal advice where classification, client-asset treatment, or insolvency outcomes depend on applicable law.
Who actually holds the assets and performs each service?
Draw an entity-and-service map before assessing controls or protections. For each step, identify the legal entity, its jurisdiction, and the institution’s counterparty. Include material subcontractors and service dependencies, not just named affiliates.
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- Who contracts with the institution and maintains its account?
- Who receives and controls private keys, holds client assets, routes orders, executes trades, settles transactions, lends, manages collateral, and handles cash?
- Which venues, banks, custodians, wallet operators, and outsourced providers are involved?
- Where are assets, keys, records, and operational functions located or controlled?
- Which assets, products, venues, and services are actually within the proposed scope?
Verify each entity’s current authorisations in the relevant official registers for the specific activities and asset types. Do not treat a provider’s general description, a group company’s licence, or a regulatory label as proof that every entity and service is covered. The SEC FAQ discusses crypto-asset activities in the US securities-law context; it is staff guidance, not a determination of a particular provider’s status.
What rights does the institution have if a custodian or broker fails?
Custody is both a technical arrangement and a question of legal rights. Review the prime brokerage agreement, custody terms, account-control documents, financing and collateral agreements, venue terms, and relevant schedules together. For each asset and cash balance, identify the obligor and determine whether the institution has a property interest, a contractual claim, or both.
- Check how the documents define segregation, including whether wallets are dedicated or omnibus and whether segregation is asserted in both law and operations.
- Identify liens, set-off rights, rehypothecation, collateral-use rights, permitted transfers, and treatment of shortfalls.
- Ask counsel to analyse insolvency treatment under the governing law, including cross-border recognition and practical access to local records or assets.
- Establish return procedures, transfer timelines and fees, withdrawal restrictions, suspension triggers, and the steps for moving assets and positions to a replacement provider.
For custody services within MiCA’s scope, compare the proposed arrangement with Article 75 of the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation. It addresses matters including the written agreement, client-position records, custody policy, statements, return procedures, segregation, liability, and use of authorised subcontractors. Confirm that the provider and service fall within scope rather than assuming the article applies to every crypto arrangement.
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Swiss institutions should also consider FINMA’s 12 January 2026 announcement on custody guidance, which highlights technical custody risks and cross-border insolvency complexity. FINMA states that responsibility remains with authorised financial institutions when they use service providers. The institution should establish how that principle applies to its own regulated entity and outsourcing structure.
In the United States, do not assume all crypto-assets receive securities protections or deposit insurance. SEC staff guidance notes that non-security crypto-assets may not be protected by SIPA or another specific insolvency regime. The answer depends on the asset, service, entity, and applicable law.
How should institutions assess custody security and operational resilience?
Request evidence of how the provider protects keys and keeps services available, then examine the scope and limits of that evidence. AIMA’s Digital Asset Custody guide treats private-key safekeeping as central to custody and identifies key loss, theft, and destruction as risks.
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Key control and transaction approval
- Review key-generation governance, key shares, storage locations, access logs, backup, recovery, rotation, and destruction procedures.
- Understand hot, warm, and cold wallet allocations and the reasoning for liquidity buffers.
- Check separation of duties, privileged access, authentication, multi-person approvals, address allowlisting, withdrawal thresholds, and transaction-monitoring controls.
Incident response and continuity
- Review change management, infrastructure and software security, vulnerability management, incident detection, response, and client-notification procedures.
- Request business-continuity and disaster-recovery plans, recovery objectives, test frequency, and a map of operational dependencies, including affiliates and outsourced services.
- Ask how the provider handles forks, airdrops, protocol upgrades, chain congestion, wrong-network transfers, and erroneous instructions.
Reconciliation and independent assurance
Understand how the provider reconciles its internal ledger with blockchain records, client statements, and third-party records. For SOC 1, SOC 2, or equivalent reports, inspect the services and locations covered, reporting period, exceptions, complementary user controls, subcontractor carve-outs, and remediation status. A report or certification is evidence about defined controls and a defined period—not a guarantee of safety, uninterrupted service, or restitution. MiCA Article 75 also sets out custody and recordkeeping obligations for providers within its scope.
Where does counterparty and credit exposure arise?
Trace a representative transaction from order placement through execution, settlement, custody, and cash movement. At each point, identify which entity owes performance to the institution and whether exposure is secured or unsecured. Map client balances, unsettled trades, margin, collateral, lending, and intraday exposures; then document limits, monitoring, escalation, and concentration controls.
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- Determine close-out netting rights and whether the provider may use or rehypothecate assets.
- Request available audited financial statements and relevant information about liquidity, capital, related-party exposures, concentrations, litigation, and enforcement matters.
- For any insurance, check the insured parties, covered risks and locations, aggregate and per-event limits, exclusions, deductibles, sublimits, and claims procedures. Do not treat a policy as a guarantee beyond its terms.
Transaction documents—not the prime-broker label—determine how obligations and exposures work. FinCEN’s guidance describes an OTC foreign-exchange and derivatives give-up model in which a prime broker becomes counterparty to accepted trades. Use that example to prompt questions about when a broker interposes itself, but do not treat a defined-market example as a rule for every crypto product.
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What compliance, reporting, and governance checks are needed?
Assess whether the provider’s compliance processes fit the institution, jurisdictions, assets, and services involved. Review customer and beneficial-owner due diligence, sanctions screening, transaction monitoring, suspicious-activity escalation, and blockchain analytics as relevant to the arrangement.
- Confirm what transaction data, position statements, valuation methods, books and records, and audit access the institution will receive.
- Establish how the provider supports regulatory reporting and notifies clients of material incidents or service changes.
- Ask who evaluates asset classification and protocol changes, approves new assets and venues, and communicates resulting changes.
- Assign accountable business, risk, compliance, and legal owners; define approval limits and triggers for an immediate or periodic reassessment.
For US bank counterparties or providers, review the applicable banking rules and supervisory context. The Federal Reserve, FDIC, and OCC’s 14 July 2025 joint statement reiterates safe-and-sound risk management and compliance with applicable law for bank crypto-asset safekeeping. It says the statement creates no new supervisory expectations; it does not remove existing obligations.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How should institutions compare providers and plan an exit?
Compare providers against the same transaction, asset set, and service scope. A side-by-side review makes differences in legal structure, controls, and exposure more visible than comparing brand-level claims.
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| Comparison area | Questions to resolve |
|---|---|
| Custody structure | Are wallets dedicated or omnibus? What legal and operational segregation applies? Who controls keys? |
| Counterparty chain | Which entities face the institution at each step? Are balances, collateral, or trades unsecured? |
| Execution and settlement | Which venues and assets are supported? How do execution, settlement, reconciliation, and outages work? |
| Financing | Which collateral is eligible? What are the haircuts, margin terms, liquidation rights, rates, and rehypothecation terms? |
| Legal and regulatory scope | Which entity is authorised for each service, asset, and jurisdiction? What protections apply to the client? |
| Controls and assurance | Which services, entities, and dates do reports cover? What exceptions, user controls, or subcontractors are excluded? |
| Resilience | What are the recovery capabilities, incident-communication arrangements, and operational dependencies? |
| Exit | Can assets, positions, and records be transferred? What happens during default, termination, or a prolonged outage? |
| Total cost | What trading, custody, financing, transfer, settlement, and ancillary fees apply? |
Provider descriptions can help identify questions, but they are not independent verification. Coinbase’s Prime Custody documentation, for example, describes named separate entities for functions including custody, order routing, financing, and cash custody, alongside operationally commingled wallets and asserted legal segregation. Verify any such representation against the current contracts and structure relevant to the institution; do not assume it establishes legal treatment or suitability.
What should the completed diligence record contain?
Keep a documented basis for the approval decision and its ongoing review. The file should connect the proposed services to the actual entities, contracts, asset flows, controls, exposures, and exit arrangements. Reassess when the provider, product, asset, jurisdiction, subcontractor, or regulatory position changes.
Quick Recap
- An entity-and-service map and representative asset, trade, collateral, and cash-flow diagrams.
- A jurisdiction and permissions analysis for each relevant legal entity and activity.
- Contract, title, segregation, and insolvency analysis, including return and transfer mechanics.
- Custody-control evidence, independent assurance findings, and operational-resilience review.
- Counterparty, credit, financial, insurance, and compliance assessments.
- A documented comparison of provider fit, unresolved risks, approval conditions, and exit readiness.
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