Prime Trust Enters Crypto Custody Race, Will Hold 'Any' Ethereum Token

Prime Trust, a small U.S. financial institution that's played a behind-the-scenes role in several dollar-backed cryptocurrencies, is entering the hotly competitive crypto custody business.

Revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, the Nevada trust company quietly began offering cold storage for bitcoin in mid-July, and will announce next week that it can also handle custody for ether and any token issued on the ethereum blockchain under the ERC-20 standard.

Several big names in financial services are entering this niche as well, with Northern Trust.

Prime Trust says that as a startup launched two years ago with all-new technology, it can outmaneuver the big boys.

Referring to Northern Trust's testing period and the uncertainty over when Goldman will come out of the bushes with a custody product, Scott Purcell, Prime Trust's CEO, told CoinDesk,.

Previously, Prime Trust was known in the crypto space for its back-office role in the so-called stablecoin announced last month by IBM and startup Stronghold.

The token, issued on the Stellar blockchain, is backed one-for-one with U.S. dollars that Prime Trust deposits at federally insured banks where it has relationships.

He claimed his company will be the first to offer custody for any ERC-20 tokens, which he described as no small feat.

There, his engineers were able to spend quality time with some of the authors of the ERC-20 standard, which allows the creation of different tokens representing various kinds of assets on the same blockchain.

"We had had an engineering breakthrough which now enables us to easily cold-storage any ERC-20 token," said Purcell.