Sberbank, Russia's largest bank, says it will build crypto trading infrastructure and a depository by December, recording client ownership and processing most transactions off the underlying chain, with licensed intermediaries required by mid-2027. So the ledger returns to a bank's books, and the chain becomes a settlement layer checked occasionally, if at all. That is not custody of coins. It is custody of claims about coins. The two are only the same thing if the bank stays honest and solvent. The whole point was not needing to make that bet.