Ripple teams up with BDACS to boost crypto custody in South Korea

Ripple has announced a major partnership with digital asset custody firm BDACS, with the aim of advancing institutional-grade crypto custody in South Korea.

BDACS and Ripple confirmed the strategic partnership via a press release.

They noted that collaboration will see the South Korea-based firm offer XRP and RLUSD custody services to institutional investors in the country.

RLUSD is Ripple’s US dollar-pegged stablecoin launched in 2024, while XRP is the cryptocurrency token by Ripple that’s currently the fourth-largest by market cap behind Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether’s stablecoin USDT.

XRP price was largely unchanged on the day despite the news, with the declines seen on February 26 weighing on sentiment.

Per CoinMarketCap, XRP hovered around $2.23, about 3% down in the past 24 hours.

Ripple-BDACS collaboration: here are the details

According to Team Ripple, the partnership with BDACS aligns with Korean regulator Financial Services Commission’s (FSC) roadmap institutional adoption of crypto.

In a recent announcement, the FSC outlined its regulatory nod for institutional participation in crypto.

The regulator has in recent weeks also looked to crackdown on non-compliance for crypto providers.

BDACS will help bring this into reality by offering secure custody for XRP and RLUSD for institutions, with Ripple seeing this as one of the ways to accelerate XRPL growth.

The alliance has the potential to spark further XRP and RLUSD use with South Korea’s free zone Busan.

“With the crypto market surging and new opportunities emerging under the FSC’s regulatory roadmap, we view this collaboration as a critical step in expanding the digital asset ecosystem,” Fiona Murray, Ripple’s managing director of APAC, said in a statement.

As part of the partnership, BDACS will leverage Ripple Custody, with the platform’s offering helping to bring institutional-grade digital assets infrastructure to investors. 

The solution works with top crypto exchanges, custodians and over-the-counter desks among others. 

Eyeing a $16 trillion market

With the entire crypto custody ecosystem poised to grow to a $16 trillion market by 2030, the collaboration may be the beginning of greater crypto adoption in South Korea and the Asia Pacific region.

Stablecoin issuance, real-world asset tokenization and asset management are some of the areas set to see an explosive surge in institutional adoption.

Commenting on the partnership and what it may mean for investors, BDACS’s chief executive officer Harry Ryoo noted:

BDACS will provide a secure and reliable custody service to support Ripple’s pioneering blockchain initiatives. Ultimately, this partnership will enable both companies to enhance and expand the digital asset ecosystem.

As well as Ripple, BDACS has expanded its footprint across the global digital assets market with key partnerships.

These include strategic collaborations with Avalanche and Polymesh on tokenized securities and RWAs. 

In December 2024, the platform struck a partnership with South Korea commercial bank Woori Bank.

The target of this cooperation is to advance crypto custody solutions across the banking ecosystem.