650 US Banks To Offer Bitcoin Purchases After NCR Partnership With NYDIG: Report

What Happened: A new deal between enterprise payments company NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR) and institutional digital asset custodian NYDIG Bitcoin Strategy Fund (BTCNX) could see 650 U.S. banks offering Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) purchases to their customers.

According to a report from Forbes, an estimated 24 million customers would be offered the option of cryptocurrency trading through mobile applications built by NCR.

NYDIG’s custody will also be made available to the financial institutions that opt for NCR’s crypto services, easing the regulatory burdens involved in holding cryptocurrency for their customers.

“We're firm believers in the benefits of crypto and the strategic application,” said NCR’s president of digital banking, Douglas Brown.

“And that's true for our banking relationships, as evidenced by NYDIG, and across retailers as well as restaurants and the like.”

Why It Matters: NYDIG, subsidiary of $11 billion asset manager Stone Ridge, has $6 billion under assets management on its own.

Stone Ridge Co-founder Yan Zhao, who joined NYDIG as president in December 2020, weighed on the partnership, saying, a lot of banks have seen that some of the biggest outflows come from depositors moving money from the bank to exchanges like Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ: COIN).

Read also: Senator Cynthia Lummis Is Up 10,000% On Her First Bitcoin Investment, Says It Should Be Part Of Retirement Portfolios

“And so that's part of why banks are so excited to have this capability for themselves and for their consumers,” he said.

Price Action: Market-leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin was trading at $34,196 at the time of writing, down 5.81% in the past 24-hours.