Institutional investors are moving beyond the question of whether digital assets have a future and toward the infrastructure needed to operate them at scale. State Street’s 2026 Digital Assets Study finds rising confidence in adoption, alongside stronger demand for regulation, cybersecurity, trusted providers, digital cash and tokenization infrastructure.

Institutional adoption of digital assets is entering a more operational phase, with investors increasingly focused on the infrastructure, regulation and risk controls required to move from experimentation to scaled deployment.

That is the central finding of State Street’s 2026 Digital Assets Study, which surveyed 300 senior executives from asset managers, asset owners and wealth managers globally. The study found that 51% expect digital assets to become mainstream within five years, compared with 42% in 2025 and just 11% in 2024. Only 3% now believe digital assets will never become mainstream.

The shift is also visible in institutional readiness. State Street says 35% of respondents already manage or distribute digital assets, while another 28% have provider relationships and infrastructure available should client demand increase. Combined, those figures indicate that digital-asset adoption is increasingly becoming an operating-model question rather than simply an investment thesis.

For financial institutions, the infrastructure supporting digital assets is becoming as important as the assets themselves. Experience operating within an appropriate regulatory framework was the most important characteristic respondents wanted from digital-asset service providers, cited by 69%. Cybersecurity followed at 54%, while financial strength ranked third at 47%.

That emphasis reflects the institutional requirements surrounding custody, settlement, payments and tokenized securities. State Street’s research found that respondents expect digital assets to have their greatest material impact on custody, cited by 66%, followed by payments at 54% and fund issuance at 51%.

Tokenization is emerging as a particularly important component of that transition. Fund issuance and tokenization represented the leading strategic priority for 52% of respondents. The findings suggest that institutions are increasingly evaluating blockchain technology through established financial products and processes rather than treating digital assets as an entirely separate market.

State Street has itself been building infrastructure around this model. In January 2026, the company launched its Digital Asset Platform with wallet management, custody and cash capabilities designed to support tokenized assets and connect digital and traditional financial services. The platform supports private and public permissioned blockchain networks and is intended to facilitate products including tokenized money-market funds, ETFs and cash products.

Digital cash is consequently becoming a critical part of the institutional tokenization equation. Nearly half of respondents in the new study described digital cash as very important to their digital-asset strategy. Settlement of tokenized assets was the leading digital-cash use case at 64%, while bank-issued U.S. dollar stablecoins and tokenized deposits were identified as preferred forms.

The significance is practical. Tokenized securities still need a reliable settlement mechanism, and digital cash can provide the monetary leg required to complete transactions on digital infrastructure. State Street’s research therefore points toward a market in which tokenized assets, digital money and institutional servicing capabilities develop together.

The regulatory environment is also becoming more relevant to that infrastructure. State Street’s 2026 regulatory analysis notes that jurisdictions are moving toward clearer requirements around intermediaries, stablecoins and digital money, although approaches remain inconsistent across markets. It identifies identity, compliance automation, cyber resilience and interoperability as important remaining challenges.

AI is another layer of the emerging digital-finance stack. State Street’s study found that 57% of respondents consider artificial intelligence critical or very important to their digital-asset operations, including applications involving smart contracts, cybersecurity and data management.

The technology convergence could become significant as institutions connect blockchain-based assets with conventional banking infrastructure. AI can support data management, monitoring and security workflows, while tokenization can alter how securities, funds and cash are issued, transferred and settled. But the combination also increases the importance of governance and operational controls.

State Street’s earlier research found that institutions were already moving toward hybrid models rather than expecting traditional financial infrastructure to disappear. Its 2025 study found that 68% expected on-chain digital-asset investment to become mainstream within 10 years, while the company continued to identify interoperability between traditional and digital infrastructure as a major consideration.

The 2026 findings suggest that this hybrid approach is becoming more established. Nearly one in five respondents believe a fully on-chain market structure will never replace today’s combination of traditional and digital infrastructure.

For digital payments and banking technology providers, the implications extend beyond cryptocurrency. Tokenized funds, stablecoins, tokenized deposits and digital settlement mechanisms could create new infrastructure requirements across custody, payments, fund administration and asset servicing.

The study also points to continued growth in institutional distribution. Around 82% of asset managers plan to distribute digital assets to institutional investors, while 84% expect to develop tokenized versions of existing investment products.

The emerging market is therefore less about replacing conventional finance with blockchain and more about integrating digital rails into established financial workflows. For banks, asset managers, wealth managers and infrastructure providers, competitive differentiation is likely to depend on whether these systems can deliver efficiency while meeting institutional standards for security, regulation, resilience and interoperability.

Market Landscape

Digital-asset infrastructure is shifting from proof-of-concept projects toward institutional operating models. Tokenization, digital cash, custody, payments and fund servicing are converging around hybrid architectures that connect blockchain-based assets with established financial infrastructure.

State Street’s own 2026 research identifies trust, regulatory experience and cybersecurity as key provider-selection criteria, while its Digital Asset Platform reflects the industry’s move toward integrated servicing infrastructure.

The market is also becoming more regulation-driven. Stablecoins, tokenized deposits and tokenized securities increasingly require clear frameworks for custody, settlement, compliance and operational resilience. That makes infrastructure providers with established financial-market capabilities increasingly important to institutional adoption.

Top Insights

• Institutional digital-asset adoption is shifting from experimentation toward operational readiness, with infrastructure, cybersecurity and regulatory compliance becoming strategic priorities.
• Tokenization is increasingly connected to established financial products, particularly funds, ETFs and other institutional investment vehicles.
• Digital cash is becoming a critical settlement layer as financial institutions explore tokenized securities and blockchain-based market infrastructure.
• AI is emerging alongside blockchain as an enabling technology for cybersecurity, data management, smart contracts and digital-asset operations.
• Hybrid traditional and digital market structures are likely to remain important as institutions modernize infrastructure incrementally.

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