IBM Debuts 'Digital Asset Haven' Platform With Dfns to Ease Institutional Access

On Monday, tech giant IBM announced the launch of Digital Asset Haven, a platform for institutions to custody, manage, and settle digital assets. Built with wallet-infrastructure provider Dfns, the platform runs on the same systems that already process most of the world’s payments and capital-markets operations.

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Louis Tellier & Maximilian Vargas
October 30, 2025

Another big week in stablecoins. They’re unsurprisingly the talk of the town at Money20/20 in Vegas, especially after a fresh wave of headlines hit this week.

  • Zelle, the U.S. bank-backed domestic payments app with 78+ million users, is planning to enable international payments via stablecoins.

  • Citi is teaming up with Coinbase to bring stablecoin payout methods to institutional clients.

  • And most notably, Western Union announced it will launch its own stablecoin, USDPT, in early 2026.

And while you start to wonder if stablecoins could be the one case where the old guard dodges the innovator’s dilemma, not everyone is racing ahead. This week, a U.S. regulator urged caution over the Bank of North Dakota’s stablecoin pilot.

But the bank’s CEO might’ve captured the zeitgeist best in his response: “We’d rather move and step forward in diligent, thoughtful ways to maintain not only our relevancy, but the relevancy of our community banking and credit union industry, as this world continues to change with things like stablecoin.”

Today, we’ll also talk about:

  • Mastercard close to acquiring Zerohash in $2 billion deal

  • IBM debuts 'Digital Asset Haven' platform for governments and institutions

  • Custodia and Vantage Bank launch stablecoin-tokenized deposits platform

HIGH SIGNAL NEWS

INSTITUTIONAL-GRADE INFRASTRUCTURE

IBM Debuts 'Digital Asset Haven' Platform With Dfns to Ease Institutional Access

Enterprise player enters the market: On Monday, tech giant IBM announced the launch of Digital Asset Haven, a platform for institutions to custody, manage, and settle digital assets. Built with wallet-infrastructure provider Dfns, the platform runs on the same systems that already process most of the world’s payments and capital-markets operations.

  • “Around 90% of global credit card transactions and 70% of all transaction volumes already run on IBM mainframes. Financial institutions trust our infrastructure for their most critical operations, so extending this reliability to digital assets is a natural next step,” explained Tina Tarquinio, Chief Product Officer for IBM Z and LinuxONE, to Blockstories.

Why it matters: With digital assets moving into regulated markets, Haven offers a way for financial institutions to integrate those assets into existing infrastructure without migrating to external custody providers. The launch also coincides with Oracle’s newly announced digital asset platform, marking a broader shift as major enterprise software firms move to compete with crypto-native infrastructure providers.

  • “Clients of all sizes now realize they must enter the blockchain era, but many lack the capital or expertise to build their own infrastructure. Our goal is to help them get started with the security and reliability of an enterprise-grade partner,” Tarquinio added.

A secure full stack: Digital Asset Haven achieves this by combining IBM’s infrastructure with the wallet stack of Paris-based startup Dfns:

  • IBM contributes the hardware security layer through its Hardware Security Modules, Hyper Protect Virtual Servers, and Offline Signing Orchestrator, providing compliant key protection, cold storage, and quantum-safe encryption.

  • Dfns adds the crypto-native layer, enabling wallet creation, key management, and transaction signing across 40+ blockchains.

Third-party integration: Dfns’ technology also extends Haven’s reach into the broader crypto ecosystem. Through its APIs, users can connect to major exchanges such as Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken, and interact with DeFi platforms like Uniswap and Morpho for payments, staking, and yield generation.

  • “Dfns was the ideal partner because of the breadth of their existing capabilities and rich integrations. With more than 250 clients already using their technology, it’s a proven and scalable platform,” explained Tarquinio.

Outlook: Haven will first launch as a cloud-based service on AWS by year-end, with a hybrid and on-premise version on IBM Z and LinuxONE systems scheduled for early 2026. The SaaS version targets fintechs and smaller institutions testing tokenized assets, while the on-prem model is aimed at regulated banks requiring full control over keys and data.

  • “We’re moving step by step, gathering feedback from clients while keeping pace with the rapid evolution of tokenization,” said Tarquinio. “We already have a strong pipeline of institutions lined up, many of them long-time IBM clients. The work we have done over the past years in key protection and cold storage has prepared us for this next phase, and we are ready to scale with our customers.”

Christopher Grilhault des Fontaines co-founded Dfns in 2020 with his wife, Clarisse Hagège, and currently serves as the startup’s Co-CEO.

IBM reached out to us earlier this year, around February while looking for a partner that could deliver a modular, enterprise-grade infrastructure, deployable on-prem, in hybrid mode, or as SaaS.

Dfns was built precisely for that: a composable stack where each layer, key management, signing, compliance, orchestration, and blockchain connectivity, can be swapped or reconfigured without rebuilding the system.

In the coming months, we’ll keep expanding DeFi integrations, advance our cross-border payment orchestration, and enable institutions to import their own smart contracts for simple tokenization functions. Our long-term goal is to become the operating system for blockchain, a secure and compliant orchestration layer for all third-party services institutions rely on.

Today we’re 35 people, and we’ll be about 50 by the end of the year. Given the current pipeline and our partnership with IBM, we’ll likely pass the 100-employee mark next year.

DIGITAL MONEY

U.S. Banks Launch a Single Token Platform Bridging Stablecoins and Tokenized Deposits — Interview

A dual-nature mechanism: Last week, Texas-based Vantage Bank and Wyoming-based Custodia Bank announced the launch of a platform enabling a dual-nature mechanism between tokenized deposits and stablecoins. The initiative reflects a broader push among U.S. banks to connect traditional deposits with onchain money.

  • Why it matters: Today, tokenized deposits and stablecoins remain legally and technically siloed. While stablecoins can circulate more freely across different environments, they’re not compatible with the traditional model of fractional-reserve banking and operate under a separate regulatory framework. To bridge both worlds, the platform introduces a single token whose legal status can shift between a deposit and a stablecoin depending on the use case.

Early experimentation: This development builds on earlier experiments by the two banks. In March, they launched the Avit Token, initially framed as a stablecoin. Three months later, it powered a tokenized cross-border payment pilot on Ethereum, where courier firm DX Xpress settled a U.S.–Mexico transaction with programmable, delivery-based payouts. Those early trials laid the groundwork for the platform now entering production.

  • A pro-crypto banking figure: Founded in 2020 by Caitlin Long, a long-time crypto advocate, Custodia is one of the few U.S. banks authorized to offer Bitcoin custody services. It has also been locked in a legal battle with the Federal Reserve over its denied master account.

Interview: In our conversation with Shawn Main, Chief Business Architect at Vantage Bank, we discussed how this dual-nature token mechanism works in practice and how Custodia and Vantage Bank plan to scale the platform.

__________________

On what the platform actually enables for banks:

“Our goal is to give any bank or credit union a turnkey way to issue and manage digital money using existing regulations and banking standards. It’s a SaaS platform that lets them mint, burn, and account for tokenized deposits or stablecoins, while keeping every movement reconciled with their core ledger just like traditional deposits.

That’s the big difference from DeFi protocols or experimental tokenization pilots, because we handle the accounting and regulatory layer. Every movement ties back to the bank’s balance sheet.

Once a bank completes onboarding and risk due diligence, it gets access to a synced digital core through our partner Infinant and a widget they can drop straight into their business banking portal. For the bank’s clients, it’s invisible. They move funds or make onchain payments exactly as they would through their usual interface.”

On how the dual-nature “tokenized deposit ↔ stablecoin” mechanism works:

“The innovation we’ve built with Custodia is a single ERC-20 token that can legally change its obligor. Inside the network it’s a tokenized deposit: insured, interest-bearing, a normal bank liability. Outside, it automatically converts into a stablecoin issued by Custodia Bank, a Wyoming-chartered SPDI fully backed 1:1.

The smart contract doesn’t change, only who owes the money. If a U.S. manufacturer pays a driver in Mexico who only has a wallet, the system automatically converts that deposit into a stablecoin, moves the reserve to Custodia, and sends it onchain. Same token, different legal wrapper. That’s how we make regulated interoperability possible.”

On the business model:

“Banks and credit unions pay a simple subscription plus transaction fees. From there, they can price services as they like. It’s meant to be accretive to their balance sheet. Even a small share of payment volume moving through tokenized rails generates new revenue, and that’s a very different model from others.”

On the choice of blockchain infrastructure:

“We chose Ethereum because it’s public, liquid, and proven. Over time, we’ll add others, like Lightning, or maybe Solana, but always permissionless. Closed networks might offer fee control, but they kill innovation. Our aim is to simplify the use and payment of gas fees for the user.”

On the regulatory path and rollout:

“Right now, we’re in a testing phase, and the plan is to scale publicly in early 2026. There’s a lot of work focused on building the right risk frameworks so our banks, credit unions, and regulators are confident in the solution.

From a governance standpoint, the network is co-developed by Custodia and Vantage. The vision is to grow a community of financial institutions that use the same regulated token. The more participants join, the fewer intermediaries that are needed. That’s how we want to enable direct settlement rails that allow banks of any size to move value directly, instantly, and securely between one another.”

A conversation with Kirit Bhatia, the recently appointed Chief Digital Asset Officer at Banking Circle, the first European bank to issue a euro stablecoin (EURI) directly under its banking license. Previously at JPMorgan and Ripple, he outlines the bank’s key priorities for the coming months and the rapidly growing client demand for stablecoins.

  1. Stablecoin-related yields: some regulatory approaches (BIS) — A new note from the Bank for International Settlements’ Financial Stability Institute yield-bearing products linked to stablecoins.

  2. Stablecoin Payments: From the Ground Up (Artemis) — A global survey by Artemis, Castle Island, and Dragonfly mapping $136 billion in stablecoin payments across sectors and regions.

  3. A view on recent assessments of digital euro investment costs (ECB) — A paper reassessing digital euro implementation costs, estimating €4–5.8 billion after accounting for synergies and shared infrastructures.

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