In the evolving landscape of digital finance, Big Four consultancy EY has focused on what it sees as the next defining frontier: wallets.
Wallets are quickly becoming the essential interface for the next era of financial services, not just tools for holding cryptocurrency, according to Mark Nichols, director at EY.
“The portfolio is the strategy,” Nichols, co-head of the firm’s digital asset advisory business, told CoinDesk in an interview. “Who owns the wallet, who supplies the wallet, will win the customer relationship.”
Nichols and his West Coast counterpart, Rebecca Carvatt, see wallets as more than just infrastructure. They are the gateway to storing, moving and managing symbolic value in a world where financial instruments, from payments to private credit, increasingly move on-chain, he said.
Not just custody: wallets as a hub of token finance
The vision is vast. Far from being a niche utility for crypto enthusiasts, wallets are becoming the connective tissue of a broader tokenized financial system. Wallets will soon be indispensable to retail investors, asset managers, treasurers and even commercial banks, according to Carvatt, co-head of EY’s digital assets advisory business.
“They will be the access point to everything: payments, tokenized assets and stablecoins,” she said.
EY’s view positions wallets as the new bank accounts of the future, with services tailored not only to individuals, but also to businesses and institutional investors who need sophisticated integration with risk systems, compliance tools and real-time capital flows.
The implication is clear: whoever controls the portfolio controls the relationship. For financial institutions already losing ground to crypto-native platforms, the change is existential.
Beyond Liquidity: The True Promise of Tokenization
The broader shift to tokenization is often presented as a liquidity play, but EY believes the narrative understates the true impact. “It’s not just about cash,” Nichols says. “Liquidity is not the be-all and end-all, it’s about the utility that on-chain finance enables.”
Instead, what EY sees is the emergence of blockchain as a real-time infrastructure for financial markets, enabling programmable transaction chains and fundamentally reshaping the way capital is managed. Tokenization certainly enables atomic settlement, but its real power lies in optimizing margins and operational efficiency.
Nichols highlights scenarios where companies can use stablecoins or tokenized assets to meet margin calls more frequently and more accurately. This in turn reduces initial margin requirements, freeing up capital for investment. “It’s about better risk alignment and real-time capital management,” he says. “And the wallet becomes the gateway to making that possible.”
A Decade in Space: EY’s In-Depth Crypto Bench
While some companies are scrambling to catch up, EY has been growing in the digital assets space for over 12 years. Its early investments in crypto-native audit and compliance practices now span thousands of professionals, supporting everything from hedge fund tax reporting to tokenized M&A advisory.
“We have worked with all client profiles: large banks, asset managers, exchanges, digital natives, infrastructure providers,” says Nichols. “and I have been working in the digital asset ecosystem for over a decade.”
EY’s hedge fund audit business was one of the first to support crypto, and its advisory team has helped companies prepare for public listings and complex regulatory environments. The company has developed tailor-made services for wallet monitoring, on-chain compliance and native tax reporting of tokens. He also continues to advise traditional financial institutions on how to design secure and compliant digital asset strategies, particularly as they begin to develop or integrate wallet infrastructure.
Portfolios for everyone: a segment-by-segment view
EY is clear that portfolio needs are not monolithic. Consumers want a seamless user experience and secure access to payments and cryptocurrencies. Businesses need integration with treasury and regulatory compliance functions across jurisdictions. Institutional clients demand secure custody, connectivity to decentralized finance (DeFi) and staking products, and integrated risk management tools.
According to EY, self-custody will not be common. The average user or institution does not want to manage their own private keys. Instead, trusted wallet providers will emerge, banks, fintechs or specialist custodians; each adapting its offer according to the segment it serves.
Portfolio provisioning then becomes a strategic imperative. Whether companies choose to create their own wallet, acquire providers, or form partnerships, the wallet is the new gateway to financial services. Companies that act now will reduce future customer acquisition costs and occupy a more defensible position in the digital asset ecosystem.
Regulation: an enabler, not an obstacle
One of the most persistent beliefs about tokenization is that regulation is a blocker. But EY executives disagree. “We already have a regulatory framework in place in key markets and, alongside the industry as a whole, passing market structure legislation will address remaining issues,” says Nichols. “A security is a security, a commodity is a commodity. Blockchain is a technology.”
In the United States, the GENIUS Act and existing Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) exemptions are paving the way for compliant tokenized products. Globally, jurisdictions are racing to attract digital asset innovation with ever-changing licensing regimes. Even if harmonization is still underway, the dynamic is undeniable.
EY sees this moment as a call to maturity, an inflection point where infrastructure catches up with its vision. “We’re past the experimentation phase,” Carvatt says. “This is now a secure and scalable implementation.”
Rethinking asset management from the ground up
Perhaps nowhere is the impact of tokenization and wallet infrastructure more profound than in asset management. A typical fund currently requires a distribution network, an investment team, a custodian, a fund administrator and regulatory reporting channels. With tokenization and smart contracts, much of this stack becomes programmable and potentially obsolete.
“Asset managers just want to build great portfolios,” says Nichols. “Blockchain allows them to do that without all the legacy friction.”
By tokenizing fund underlyings and integrating logic into smart contracts, asset managers can automate functions such as distribution, compliance and reporting. This opens the door to lower fees, wider access to investors and new types of products, particularly in the area of private credit and alternatives, where cost has historically been a barrier.
“From those who are unbanked or non-brokered, we are seeing more and more people gaining exposure to assets that were previously out of reach,” says Carvatt. “It’s powerful.”
The future of finance is on-chain
Whether it’s cryptocurrencies, payments or tokenized assets, wallets will be the gateway to a new financial reality. Companies that ignore this risk becoming irrelevant. Those who adopt it will own the infrastructure and customer relationships at the heart of digital finance.
“The future of finance is on-chain,” says Nichols. “And the wallet is at its center.”
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