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DBS Bank of Singapore has officially announced the arrival of its digital asset exchange, and operations will begin next week.
The DBS Digital Exchange is 10% owned by the SGX Singapore Stock Exchange. It will also provide tokenization of securities and other assets, as well as bank-level custody for digital assets.
The new exchange will facilitate spot exchanges of fiat currencies to cryptocurrencies and vice versa, Piyush Gupta, CEO of DBS Group, said at a press conference on Thursday.
Four fiat currencies (SGD, USD, HKD, JPY) will be tradable against four of the more established cryptocurrencies that cover 70-80% of the market, namely bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash and XRP, Gupta added.
“We are ready to start cryptocurrency trading next week,” Gupta said. “Security token offerings may take a month or two to start, but in short, we are good to go.”
The security token offering part of the digital exchange will comprise 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.
“You can tokenize anything, you can tokenize a painting. But for now, we will focus on financial assets. ”Gupta said.
The third part is custody, which is said to be banking and institutional grade. This will be an air gap cold storage that leverages all of the bank’s existing cybersecurity technology, according to the CEO.
Interestingly, Swiss digital exchange SDX said this week that it would also be building a crypto exchange in Singapore with Japan’s SBI Holdings, which is scheduled to launch in 2022.
The DBS exchange will only be open to institutional clients and accredited investors, Gupta said.
“We are excited to apply our strengths in market infrastructure and risk management to this company,” said Loh Boon Chye, SGX CEO in a statement. “There are significant opportunities to bring confidence and efficiency in price discovery to the global digital asset space. We look forward to working closely with DBS to further Singapore’s position as a multi-asset international financial center. “
