DBS, the most important financial institution in Singapore, has seen buying and selling quantity on its digital change skyrocket this 12 months.
The worth of digital fee tokens traded on DBS Digital Trade within the first 5 months of 2024 tripled over the identical interval in 2023, in Singapore greenback phrases, in keeping with a press launch shared with Decrypt. The variety of lively buying and selling shoppers on the change grew by over a 3rd (36%), whereas digital belongings held by the platform have been up 80% over the identical interval final 12 months.
With skilled traders “more and more viewing digital belongings as a authentic a part of their different portfolios,” DBS Digital Trade CEO Lim Wee Kian mentioned that the platform plans to increase its suite of merchandise for skilled traders.
The agency is “learning itemizing stablecoins on our change and learning the right way to allow shoppers to earn rewards by Ethereum staking,” he added.
Earlier this 12 months, the financial institution stepped in to quash studies that it was an Ethereum whale, denying claims by blockchain analytics agency Nansen that it operated a pockets holding over $650 million in ETH.
However, DBS has been one thing of an early adopter of crypto, launching its digital change in 2020, when many banks have been blocking crypto transactions, and including help for China’s e-CNY central financial institution digital foreign money (CBDC) in 2023.
The financial institution’s digital change serves institutional and accredited traders and claims to be the world’s first full-service digital change backed by a financial institution.
DBS expanded its providers to supply a crypto custody service in 2021.