Southwestern Asian banking group DBS announced on Thursday it will set up a digital exchange. The exchange will notably allow institutional investors, as well as accredited investors, to tap into a fully integrated tokenization, trading, and custody ecosystem for digital assets.
DBS further revealed that then new DBS Digital Exchange will allow it to use blockchain technology to provide an ecosystem for fund raising through asset tokenization and secondary trading of digital assets including cryptocurrencies, including:
- Security Token Offerings – A regulated platform for the issuance and trading of digital tokens backed by financial assets, such as shares in unlisted companies, bonds, and private equity funds.
- Digital Currency Exchange – Cryptocurrency trading that will facilitate spot exchanges from fiat currencies to cryptocurrencies and vice versa. The DBS Digital Exchange will offer exchange services between four fiat currencies (SGD, USD, HKD, JPY), and four of the most established cryptocurrencies, namely Bitcoin, Ether, Bitcoin Cash, and XRP.
- Digital Custody Services – An institution-grade digital custody solution to meet the increasing demand for secure custodial services tailored for digital assets under their prevailing regulatory standards. Leveraging DBS’ experience in providing world-class custody services for conventional assets, DBS’ digital custody services provide the custody of cryptographic keys that control digital assets on behalf of clients.
Speaking about the exchange, Piyush Gupta, Group CEO of DBS, stated:
“The exponential pace of asset digitalization provides immense opportunities to reshape capital markets. For Singapore to become even more competitive as a global financial hub, we have to prepare ourselves to welcome the mainstream adoption of digital assets and currency trading. DBS is committed to accelerating the development of a fully integrated ecosystem to facilitate this. We believe that this is the first of its kind integrated offering, which is differentiated in many ways.”
DBS went on to add that the announcement follows the in-principle approval by the Monetary Authority of Singapore to recognize DBS Digital Exchange as a Recognised Market Operator, allowing it to operate organized markets for assets such as shares, bonds, and private equity funds.
