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A major Asian bank, the DBS in Singapore, could launch a cryptocurrencies and securities exchange in the near future. It would trade Bitcoin (BTC) and three major altcoins in exchange for fiduciary currencies such as the Singapore dollar, but also three other major international currencies.
A DBS page dedicated to what the bank seems to have called the DBS Digital Exchange has already been momentarily put online but can now be found “cached”.
The page shows that the new exchange will allow customers to trade the DBS, as well as XRP, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Ethereum (ETH) against the Hong Kong dollar, Japanese yen and even the US greenback, in addition to the Singapore dollar.
And this seems to be the tip of the iceberg as an “STO (Security Token Offering) offer” that “will be announced and launched in due course”, allowing “qualified investors” to “securitize real assets into tradable digital tokens”.
It appears that the DBS Digital Exchange has been given a regulatory go-ahead, with claims on the site that it is “regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore”, the country’s national bank and leading financial regulator.
Cryptocurrency custody services also appear to be on the way, as the bank has apparently written: “To ensure the security of customers’ digital assets, DBS Bank has deployed DBS Digital Custody, an institutional-level custody solution specifically designed for the preservation of digital assets”.
In 2019, DBS had SGD 579 billion (USD 426 billion) in assets, while its revenues reached SGD 14.5 billion and its net profit amounted to SGD 6.4 billion. The bank claims to have more than 240,000 institutional clients and nearly 11 million clients in consumer banking and wealth management.
In the race for adapting its economy to Blockchain, Asia as a whole seems to be in the lead and will certainly continue to be one of the most profitable market in the coming years.