Ripple’s Global Co-Head of Policy on 4 Best Practices for Digital Asset Custody

Ripple distills a Singapore workshop into four custody best practices: compliance by design, tailored models, operational resilience and governance.

Updated Aug 19, 2025, 5:55 p.m. Published Aug 19, 2025, 5:41 p.m.

Ripple executives used a policy-related blog post on Monday to argue that digital asset custody has become the foundation for institutional adoption of stablecoins, tokenized assets and cross-border settlement.

Rahul Advani, Ripple’s global co-head of policy, and Caren Tso, its Asia-Pacific policy manager, said in the post that custody is now a critical entry point for enterprises that want to scale digital finance. They pointed to a recent Ripple–Boston Consulting Group report projecting tokenized real-world assets could reach $18.9 trillion by 2033, and to Ripple’s own survey finding more than half of firms in Asia Pacific plan to adopt custody solutions in the next three years.

The blog post was timed to a "Custody & Cybersecurity: Institutional Best Practices for Stablecoins and Beyond" workshop Ripple co-hosted with Blockchain Association Singapore (BAS) earlier this month. That event focused on institutional standards for stablecoin custody, culminating in the release of a “best practices” report by BAS subcommittees on stablecoins and cybersecurity.

The authors outlined four principles they said should guide custody design.

First, they called for a “compliance-by-design” approach, noting that regulators such as Singapore’s Monetary Authority (MAS) require strict asset segregation and recovery protocols.

Second, they stressed that institutions must choose custody models suited to their needs, whether third-party, hybrid, or self-custody, with growing demand for wallet types beyond the hot-versus-cold divide.

Third, the executives highlighted operational resilience. They said workflows must withstand disruption, meet recovery benchmarks set by regimes such as the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act, and incorporate strong monitoring and incident-response processes.

Fourth, they pointed to governance, citing segregation of duties, independent oversight, and audit trails as essential to maintaining trust.

A fifth theme of the workshop, according to Ripple, was the role of custody in enabling stablecoins to move into mainstream use cases such as trade finance, cross-border payments, and liquidity management. The authors argued that enterprise-grade custodians can support this shift by offering API integration, AML tools and programmable features, while also evolving to safeguard tokenized documents tied to global commerce.

The blog also promoted Ripple’s own products. The company highlighted its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin, which it said benefits from being issued under a New York Trust Company Charter, with requirements for segregated reserves, independent audits, and full dollar backing. Ripple added that its custody platform is designed to help institutions manage tokenized assets while meeting compliance and operational standards.

Advani and Tso concluded that as digital finance expands, custody infrastructure will need to integrate more deeply with smart contracts, tokenized documents, and automated compliance. “These capabilities,” they wrote, “will help lay the foundation for a digital financial system that is scalable, interoperable, and fit for the new era of finance.”

Siamak Masnavi

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