The bank that holds your coins is about to be able to put them to work. Neither BNY nor Figment has said when that starts.

Alexander Hamilton's bank is going into staking. BNY, the custody bank he founded in 1784, has picked Figment to supply the validator infrastructure for staking on its Digital Asset Custody platform, The Block reported on November 12. Ethereum comes first, with Solana to follow, according to the announcement coverage from The Block and FinanceFeeds.

Eligible institutional clients are the target: asset managers, ETF issuers, corporates and wealth management firms. Figment runs the validators, the machines that confirm transactions and earn the staking rewards. BNY keeps the custody and servicing role, so clients stake from the same platform where they already hold their assets.

What the companies haven't said is just as telling. Neither has given a go-live date, and the coverage doesn't spell out how rewards will be split or what regulatory and eligibility conditions clients must meet. Until they're filled in, you can't price the product.

Josh Deems, Figment's Head of Revenue, called it another way for clients to stake using their existing platform and servicing workflows.

BlackRock's ETHA lost about $346 million of the week's roughly $365 million in ETF withdrawals, while its staking sibling ETHB took in $1.15 million. ETH holds near $2,235, with $2,200 as the support traders are watching first. - US spot Ether ETF $365 million outflows - sixth straight week Ether ETF withdrawals

Read past the polite language and the pitch is simple. Staking is one of the few ways to earn a return on crypto you plan to hold anyway, and it matters more when prices are sliding and nobody's making money on appreciation.

The pressure to offer it is also competitive. Staking-enabled ETF products have been launching, and the issuers behind them need a custodian that can stake without moving assets out of the vault. A bank that can't do that loses the mandate to one that can.

BNY has already announced a staking deal with Galaxy

This isn't BNY's first staking partner. On August 4, BNY said it would integrate Galaxy's validator infrastructure into the same custody platform, pending regulatory approval and ahead of a planned 2026 rollout, according to Ledger Insights and Blockhead. Blockhead's headline put the platform at $62.6 trillion in assets under custody and administration, a figure that makes any crypto line look small for now.

So BNY has two staking providers announced three months apart, and the Figment news doesn't say how the work will be divided. Frankly, that looks like a bank refusing to depend on one validator operator, which is exactly what a risk committee would ask for. It also means the Galaxy rollout, which was pending regulatory approval, has not been confirmed live.

Figment is the more established name on the infrastructure side. The company says it serves more than 1,500 institutions, including asset managers, exchanges, custodians and wallet providers. Its work with Coinbase Prime had passed $2 billion in staked assets by October 2025, The Block noted. Ripple Custody and Fireblocks Trust Company have also chosen Figment for staking, so BNY is joining a list of custodians that have settled on the same validator vendor.

What to watch before you call it demand

It's tempting to read this as proof that institutions are buying while retail sells. The announcement doesn't support that yet. A signed integration shows a bank is building the pipes, not that any client has staked a single ETH through them, and BNY hasn't published a client count or a stake size.

The test is concrete. Look for a launch date, the reward split between BNY, Figment and the client, and whether the Galaxy and Figment routes both go live. BNY and Figment haven't answered those questions in the coverage published so far.

Strategy holds 850,364 bitcoin worth about $64 billion at cost, and JPMorgan has pegged forced selling from the MSCI deletion at $2.8 billion. Metaplanet and Yellow Cake are also out, while 17 other watchlist names, including SharpLink, stayed in. - why MSCI dropped Strategy from USA Index - when passive funds will sell MSTR

Also read: CFTC Chair Selig says crypto firms are signing up for his agency's rules as Congress stalls • Lightning Labs launches pi402 so AI agents can pay for inference in bitcoin • Tron, Tether and Chainalysis launch Digital Crime Task Force to freeze USDT

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