Decem­ber, 2020, the DBS Bank of Sin­ga­pore announced a new cryp­tocur­ren­cy exchange divi­sion called DBS Dig­i­tal Exchange which will also enable sec­ondary trad­ing of dig­i­tal assets such as shares in unlist­ed com­pa­nies, bonds, and pri­vate equi­ty funds.

“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” said Piyush Gup­ta, Group CEO, DBS at the launch of the new exchange.

How­ev­er, the DBS Dig­i­tal Exchange will only be avail­able for insti­tu­tion­al investors and accred­it­ed investors to get a foothold in a ful­ly tok­eniza­tion ecosys­tem for dig­i­tal assets. DBS also aims for a deep inte­gra­tion into the Asian bank­ing sys­tem, offer­ing cus­tomers exchange ser­vices between four fiat cur­ren­cies, name­ly Sin­ga­pore Dol­lars, U.S. Dol­lars, Hong Kong Dol­lars, and the Japan­ese Yen and four of the most estab­lished cryp­tocur­ren­cies, name­ly Bit­coin, Ether, Bit­coin Cash and XRP.

The DBS Dig­i­tal Exchange is backed by the Singapore’s largest deriv­a­tives and asset exchange SGX by pro­vid­ing tok­eniza­tion of secu­ri­ties and oth­er assets, as well as bank-grade cus­tody for dig­i­tal assets. Besides the col­lec­tive goal of both par­ties to explore oppor­tu­ni­ties to deep­en the liq­uid­i­ty, scale, and growth of Singapore’s cap­i­tal, SGX will also take a 10% stake in this ven­ture. Loh Boon Chye, CEO of SGX, said, “We are excit­ed to apply our strengths in mar­ket infra­struc­ture and risk man­age­ment to this ven­ture. There are sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties to bring trust and effi­cien­cy in price dis­cov­ery to the glob­al dig­i­tal assets space. We look for­ward to work­ing close­ly with DBS to advance Singapore’s stand­ing as a mul­ti-asset inter­na­tion­al finan­cial Centre.”

DBS’ Dig­i­tal Exchange is already approved by the Mon­e­tary Author­i­ty of Sin­ga­pore (MAS) as a Rec­og­nized Mar­ket Oper­a­tor which allows DBS to oper­ate orga­nized mar­kets for assets such as shares, bonds and pri­vate equi­ty funds.

Anoth­er step in the right direc­tion for dig­i­tal assets and tok­enized securities.

Links

DBS — https://www.dbs.com.sg/ 

SGX — https://www.sgx.com/ 

MAS — https://www.mas.gov.sg/