Bitcoin surges on BNY Mellon, Mastercard news

Bitcoin rallied on Thursday after Bank of New York Mellon and Mastercard said they would be making it easier for customers to use cryptocurrencies.

BNY Mellon announced plans to provide "an integrated service for digital assets".

Chief executive officer Roman Regelman said: "Growing client demand for digital assets, maturity of advanced solutions, and improving regulatory clarity present a tremendous opportunity for us to extend our current service offerings to this emerging field.

"Pending further evaluations and approvals, we expect to begin offering these innovative and industry-shaping capabilities later this year."

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Mastercard’s executive president of digital assets Raj Dhamodharan wrote in a blog post that the company will this year start supporting select cryptocurrencies directly on its network.

"Our philosophy on cryptocurrencies is straightforward: It’s about choice. Mastercard isn’t here to recommend you start using cryptocurrencies. But we are here to enable customers, merchants and businesses to move digital value - traditional or crypto - however they want. It should be your choice, it’s your money," he wrote.

The news sent Bitcoin up 8% to an all-time high of $48,481.

Bitcoin has been on a tear in the last few weeks. On Monday, the cryptocurrency surged after it emerged that Elon Musk’s Tesla had invested heavily in the currency and plans to start accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment for its products "in the near future".

At the end of January, Musk sent the cryptocurrency surging after changing his Twitter bio to just "#bitcoin".

Neil Wilson, chief market analyst at Markets.com, said: "It’s a big deal since BNY is the first big national custodial bank to offer custody services for crypto assets. You have to assume this is not for your average checking account but for big institutional-level financing.

"It comes hot off the heels of Tesla’s $1.5bn Bitcoin investment of course. Yet more ‘mainstreaming’ and corporate support. The question is: the more suits take over this space, what happens to regulation? More corporate adoption = more regulatory oversight. Whilst it was fine to let Bitcoin be when it was used for money laundering and drug running, it’s another story when the likes of BNY are offering custodial services."