DBS says its retail crypto trading desk will be broader in scope and accessibility than its current institutional service.
Singaporean banking giant DBS Bank Limited is reportedly planning to launch a retail crypto trading desk by the end of 2022. Piyush Gupta, chief executive officer at the multinational bank, revealed this development during a Q4 earnings call on Monday, February 14th. Gupta said:
“We are starting the initial work to expand it beyond the current investor base [of accredited investors]. Lots of work to do with suitability and anti-fraud… we should have something by the end of the year.”
In addition, the top DBS executive also stated that the bank is devoted to ensuring a holistically sound user experience. This entails spending the first half of this year improving the ease with which current clients may use the crypto trading desk. At the moment, users have to first contact a banker via telephone in order to place an order for digital currencies. Gupta says that DBS aims to address this by making the process into an online self-service method.
DBS Institutional Crypto Trading Platform
In early 2021, DBS established an institutional digital assets trading desk which provided an avenue for trading Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptos. Now, the leading Asian bank wants to expand on that service and make it available to retail investors.
DBS did not provide further details into its upcoming initiative, such as whether crypto purchased on the trading desk platform is transferable to other providers or wallets. However, a licensing framework for retail exchanges is already in place with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Not everyone seems to still be on board though, as Binance withdrew its licensing operation and recently discontinued its local binance.sg exchange.
DBS Digital Exchange
In a recent media session, CEO of DBS Digital Exchange (DDEx) Lionel Lim revealed the Exchange’s full-year trading volume for 2021. According to Lim, the figure was approximately $819 million, or 1.1 billion Singaporean dollars. In the last quarter of 2021, DBS Digital Exchange’s trading volume stood at approximately $595.5 million, or 800 million Singaporean dollars.
The Metaverse
Another top-level DBS executive weighed in on the emerging metaverse and what that meant to the Singaporean bank. According to senior investment strategist Daryl Ho, industry leaders already taken with the digitalization trends of digital assets will enjoy the metaverse’s advantages. In addition, Ho also stated that those who are already engaging in the metaverse movement will reap great benefits . The senior investment strategist also pinpointed the companies that stock trading investors should have on their radar as prime movers of the metaverse. According to him, “the computer gaming industry they are the ones that have the most experience designing large virtual worlds where multiple users are immersing themselves in almost on a daily basis, so I think these are the companies look out for, and these are the companies that would pave the way and shape the metaverse as we know it.”
Tolu is a cryptocurrency and blockchain enthusiast based in Lagos. He likes to demystify crypto stories to the bare basics so that anyone anywhere can understand without too much background knowledge.
When he’s not neck-deep in crypto stories, Tolu enjoys music, loves to sing and is an avid movie lover.
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