Global custodian BNY Mellon has appointed the former CEO of a crypto custodian as head of digital asset product.

Maxime de Guillebon was previously head of Zodia Custody, the entity set up by Northern Trust and Standard Chartered.

He has been replaced by Julian Sawyer, who has previously worked with challenger bank Starling and crypto firms Bitstamp and Gemini.

The appointment of de Guillebon is one of a number of changes at BNY Mellon’s digital assets team in recent weeks. This includes the promotion of Caroline Butler to the role of CEO of digital assets in February.

However, any notion that the US bank is accelerating its digital assets ambitions was tempered by comments made this week by the bank’s CEO Robin Vince.

“We’ve said all along, we’re going to be incredibly slow accrual before we run on digital assets broadly and crypto,” said Vince during the company’s first-quarter earnings call.

The comments are in line with Vince’s statement at the earnings call in the previous quarter. Broad adoption of digital assets is not expected in the next two or possibly five years, but the bank would have a presence just in case.

“It would be like being the custodian of 50 years ago and sticking with paper and not adopting a computer,” said Vince. “That’s not going to be us.”

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