Caitlin Long is the founder and CEO of Custodia bank, a bank that specializes in digital asset payment and custody solutions for US commercial customers.^[5]
She was the former chairman & president of Symbiont (2016-2018), which was named to Forbes Fintech 50 in 2018, Caitlin is also an ex-Wyoming Blockchain Task Force, and a 22-year Wall Street veteran.^[6][7]

Education

Caitlin holds a B.A in Political economy from the University of Wyoming in the Class of 1990 and an M.P.P in International trade and police from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in the Class of 1994.[6] She also Juris Doctor in the Class of 2004.

Early Life and Career

Caitlin Long is the daughter of a professor of electrical engineering and an elementary school teacher who taught the children of miners.^[12]

From 1994 to 1997, Caitlin was an Associate at Salomon Brothers. From 1997 to 2007, she served as a Managing Director at Credit Suisse. From 2003-2011, Caitlin was a Board member of the University of Wyoming Foundation. In 2007, she joined Morgan Stanley as a Managing Director and quit the company in 2016. From that time and up to 2018, she was a Chairman of the Board & President of Symbiont.^[2][3] Between 1994 and 1997, Caitlin worked at Salomon Brothers, and from 1997 to 2007 she worked at Credit Suisse.^[4]

Caitlin is a member of the Mises Institute, an organization dedicated to promoting Austrian economics and other Libertarian principles.

She is currently the founder and CEO of Custodia Bank. Caitlin has Long spent 22 years as a Wall Street veteran who has been active in bitcoin and blockchain since 2012. In 2018-20 she led the charge to make her native state of Wyoming an oasis for blockchain companies in the US, where she helped Wyoming enact 20 blockchain-enabling laws. From 2016-18 she jointly spearheaded a blockchain project for delivering market index data to Vanguard as chairman and president of Symbiont, an enterprise blockchain start-up.^[9]

Caitlin Long Started and ran 3 successful businesses in pensions and insurance. She was a top-rated equity research analyst who worked directly for the Co-CEOs.^[10][11]

Awards:

• Women in Finance Award for Excellence in Blockchain 2016 by MarketsMedia.
• Inc. list of 10 business leaders changing the world through tech in 2016
• Institutional Investor list of most influential people in pensions (“Pension 40”): 2015, 2014, and 2013^[8]

Custodia

Custodia Bank is formed to serve as a compliant bridge to the U.S. dollar payments system and a custodian of digital assets that can meet the strictest level of institutional custody standards. Custodia specializes in digital asset payment and custody solutions for US commercial customers.^[13]

Custodia Bank intends to provide a full suite of banking and financial services tailored to business customers looking for enhanced regulatory clarity and minimized transactional risk as they traverse the digital asset frontier, It is a regulatorily compliant platform for businesses to transact across digital assets and the traditional financial system.^[14][15]

Controversies

In October 2020, Custodia Bank filed its application for a Federal Reserve master account, which would allow it to serve institutional customers by providing access to the FedWire network - onboarding cryptocurrencies as an asset to their customers. ^[18]

On June 7th, 2022, Custodia Bank filed a complaint in the US District Court for “an unlawful delay” on their master account application, against the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. ^[17]

On October 11th, 2022, The Bank of New York (BNY) Mellon, the oldest bank in the US, will begin storing cryptocurrencies for its clients on the same platform as traditional investments, making it the first large US bank to do so. The bank received approval to store and provide bookkeeping services for select customers' Bitcoin and Ether which Caitlin Long spoke up about. ^[19][20]

“You will see a filing from my company in that lawsuit pertaining to the announcement this morning”

In November 2022, it was announced that the Court's opinion was largely favorable to Custodia, allowing four of its claims to move forward. These included claims that the defendants unreasonably delayed processing the application and that Custodia may be able to compel the grant of a master account. ^[21]

However, on December 12th, 2022, a Wyoming federal judge denied Custodia Bank’s motion for default judgment on the lawsuit filed back in June 2022 and has given the Federal Reserve until February 9th, 2023 to submit an administrative record. ^[22]