ICE acquired a custody business in May 2025 and is now pitching ICE Digital Trust to hold crypto ETF assets. The $184B market is growing fast.
Intercontinental Exchange bought a digital asset custody business in May 2025. It is now pitching that subsidiary, ICE Digital Trust, as the custody partner for the $184 billion crypto ETF market, according to a white paper released this week.
ICE Digital Trust is regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services as a limited-purpose trust company. It would hold the private keys that control the Bitcoin, Ethereum and tokenized assets backing those funds.
Crypto custody differs from traditional securities custody. Stocks sit in centralized depositories. Crypto assets are controlled by cryptographic keys. Lose those keys and the assets are gone, irreversibly. Every spot Bitcoin or Ethereum ETF must appoint a qualified custodian to manage that risk. ICE wants to be that custodian.
The white paper argues the opportunity extends beyond today's ETF assets. Market researchers project the crypto custody industry could grow from roughly $3.7 billion in 2026 to $7.7 billion by 2032. As asset managers pile into crypto ETFs, custody becomes a recurring revenue stream tied to asset growth, not trading volume.
The push comes as new ETF launches accelerate. Morgan Stanley announced this week it would list Ethereum and Solana ETFs on NYSE Arca, the same exchange ICE owns. The combination of exchange operator and custodian gives ICE a vertical stack: it runs the market where ETFs trade and the vault where the underlying assets sit.
Institutional crypto custody already has established players. Coinbase Custody, Fidelity Digital Assets, BitGo and Anchorage Digital all compete for the same business. BitGo alone says it safeguards more than $100 billion in digital assets and secures roughly 20% of all on-chain Bitcoin transaction value. ICE is betting that its regulatory status and exchange ties give it an edge.
The custody play fits a broader digital asset strategy. In October 2025, ICE committed up to $2 billion to prediction market platform Polymarket, becoming its global distributor of event-driven market data while collaborating on tokenization projects.
ICE's Alpha Score sits at 54 out of 100, a mixed near-term read. Morgan Stanley's score is 58, moderate. Both trade in the financials sector.
ICE's white paper suggests the company sees custody as the next phase of institutional adoption. Not launching new funds, securely holding them. As crypto ETF assets continue to accumulate and tokenized securities gain traction among banks and asset managers, the custody business could deliver the stable, fee-based revenue that exchange operators prize.
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