Barely a week after the PayPal-bitcoin announcement, DBS – the largest bank in Southeast Asia – has announced it will offer bitcoin, ethereum and other cryptocurrency trading pairs and custodial services.
In Brief
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DBS bank has soft-launched a crypto-to-fiat exchange offering for all its clients.
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This comes days after PayPal announced bitcoin support to its 320 million clients.
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DBS will be regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The bank currently holds $518 billion in assets and is positioning itself to get on the bandwagon before the bitcoin train leaves the station.
“Digital assets are poised to be the future of tomorrow’s digital economy. With DBS Digital Exchange, a bank-backed digital exchange, companies and investors can now leverage an integrated ecosystem of solutions to tap the vast potential of private markets and digital currencies,” they say, adding:
“Through DBS Digital Exchange, SMEs and large corporates alike can also tap on a Security Token platform to raise capital efficiently through the digitisation of their securities and assets, enabling issuers to reach a wider base of investors that might not traditionally have access to such tokens.”
Interestingly enough, the page seems to have been taken down at this point int time, but the original post can be found on Google Cache, where it explains the “DBS Digital Exchange is regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and is backed by the leading Asian financial services group, DBS Bank.”
The announcement, which has possibly been retracted, says that numerous trading pairs will be offered, including: BTC/SGD | BTC/HKD | BTC/USD | BTC/JPY, BCH/SGD | BCH/HKD | BCH/USD | BCH/JPY, ETH/SGD | ETH/HKD | ETH/USD | ETC/JPY, XRP/SGD | XRP/HKD | XRP/USD | XRP/JPY, and Security Tokens, which are asset-backed tokens.
The bank will charge 10bps in fees but normal customers won’t be able to access this unless they go through third parties, per the banks statements.
“DBS Digital Exchange only accepts financial institutions and professional market makers as members. Individual investors can only access the exchange via a member, for instance, DBS Vickers Securities (Singapore) Pte Ltd and DBS Private Bank.”
While benefits for potential users to use this service (as opposed to others) are debatable, the DBS endorsement of crypto comes as another sign that traditional finance is scrambling to get a foot in the crypto door.
This is the first mainstream institutional bank that has come out strong to offer such services for cryptocurrencies following last week’s PayPal announcement.
Clearly, the institutions have arrived, and as the trend picks up we can expect more legacy banks to change their tune on bitcoin.
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