Biggest Bank in Southeast Asia to Offer Bitcoin and Ethereum Trading

DBS, the biggest bank in Southeast Asia and among the largest banks in Asia with total assets of S$518 billion is to offer bitcoin, ethereum, bitcoin cash and xrp trading as well as custody.

“Digital assets are poised to be the future of tomorrow’s digital economy. With DBS Digital Exchange, a bank-backed digital exchange, companies and investors can now leverage an integrated ecosystem of solutions to tap the vast potential of private markets and digital currencies,” they say, adding:

“Through DBS Digital Exchange, SMEs and large corporates alike can also tap on a Security Token platform to raise capital efficiently through the digitisation of their securities and assets, enabling issuers to reach a wider base of investors that might not traditionally have access to such tokens.”

Curiously the page appears to be down now, but we were able to find it on Google Cache where it explains the “DBS Digital Exchange is regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and is backed by the leading Asian financial services group, DBS Bank.”

They say numerous trading pairs will be offered, including BTC/SGD | BTC/HKD | BTC/USD | BTC/JPY, BCH/SGD | BCH/HKD | BCH/USD | BCH/JPY, ETH/SGD | ETH/HKD | ETH/USD | ETC/JPY, XRP/SGD | XRP/HKD | XRP/USD | XRP/JPY, and Security Tokens, which are asset-backed tokens.

They are to charge 10bps in fees but ordinary customers apparently can’t access this unless they go through third parties with the bank stating:

“DBS Digital Exchange only accepts financial institutions and professional market makers as members. Individual investors can only access the exchange via a member, for instance, DBS Vickers Securities (Singapore) Pte Ltd and DBS Private Bank.”

There’s trading hours here, 9am to 4pm, and DBS Bank is to handle custody with little detail provided on how exactly they are to do so.

Finally, you can “place cash and/or digital asset/s upfront to trade in the Digital Exchange,” meaning it sounds like you can deposit and withdraw bitcoin or eth like normal.

All that makes this the first mainstream bank to offer such services for cryptocurrencies which continue their march towards fully integrating with the financial sector as institutional investors become more and more interested.