Singapore’s largest bank, DBS officially announced the launch of its cryptocurrency exchange which will become operational by the end of next week.
Dubbed ‘DBS Digital Exchange’, the new cryptocurrency exchange will be available for institutional and elite retail investors. DBS CEO, Piyush Gupta said that it will be the first digital asset exchange in the world to be backed by a traditional bank.
DBS Digital Exchange will allow trading of Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and Bitcoin Cash against four fiat currencies including the Singapore Dollar, the Hong Kong Dollar, the Japanese Yen and the US Dollar with trading hours of 9 am to 4 pm from Monday to Friday.
The Bank outlined that the Singapore Exchange (SGX) is a 10% shareholder in the mentioned project. In addition to the crypto trading services, the DBS Digital Exchange aims to facilitate SME’s and large corporations to raise funds through security token offerings.
Gupta mentioned that current cryptocurrency exchanges worldwide are losing a lot of opportunities that a banking group could bring to the digital currencies market.
Institutional Investors
The new exchange is planning to target institutional investors as of now. But, the elite retail investors qualified under the central bank regulations as accredited investors can also participate. Gupta mentioned the exponential growth of cryptocurrencies in the last few months amid growing demand from financial institutions worldwide.
“We bring a large origination capability from our capital markets presence. We bring a substantial distribution capability, which includes our own private bank and wealth base as well as institutional client base. And because we are an established custody house, we’ve built a lot of capabilities and knowledge, and experience in managing the custody function as well. So leveraging the power and strength of DBS bank allows us to build volume, liquidity and scale in this exchange in a manner which a lot of other bespoke exchanges find difficult to do,” Gupta said in a statement.
