Singapore's largest bank DBS is on crypto despite the market slump

Singapore's largest bank plans to expand your business with cryptocurrencies and digital assets despite the crypto baisse, and says that she wants to expand her digital exchange and offer more of her 300,000 wealthy customers in Asia.

PIYUSH GUPTA, Chief Executive from DBS since 2009, said that the downturn in the cryptom market has proven that established and regulated financial institutions and not just start-ups should offer products such as trading in digital assets for private investors.

The bank's broker area received a cryptocurrency license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore last year, which gives its institutional and wealthy customers access to their DBS Digital Exchange at invitation.

Guppa said that the bank has fewer than 1,000 members on the stock exchange, but would soon offer the service of 300,000 of its wealthy customers across Asia, including private banks, accredited investors, other stock exchanges and funds via their mobile DBS banking app.

The app would make the process less cumbersome and faster for customers and make DBS possible to offer it more customers, he said. In December 2021, DBS had a balance sheet total of $ 686 billion ($ 488 billion).

The former Citibank manager, who worked in leading bank functions across Asia, said DBS had to support Singapore's advance into top finance technology. "People expect us to be a pioneer in this area and continue to postpone limits," he said in an interview with the Financial Times.

The DBS's plans, where the state investment group Temasek holds almost 30 percent, come, while Singapore deals with his messages about his attempt to become a crypto hub. The city state, whose economy is dependent on financial services and trade, believes that it must be innovative to remain relevant.

But this year's collapse of several top-class crypto groups, including the Three Arrows and Terraform Labs, based in Singapore, as well as the worldwide falling reviews have raised questions about the strategy of MAS.

In response to this, MAS managing director Ravi Menon said last week that the regulatory authority would take steps to protect small investors and at the same time reaffirm the city's digital-asset strategy.

GUPTA described the challenges that the country's regulatory authorities are facing. "On the one hand we want to be a global crypto hub. On the other hand, we are also very concerned that our domestic population is burned with this speculative asset class," he said.

Guppa said that the losses that small investors suffered from the crypto crash underlined the importance of more established financial institutions that offer services for digital assets. The total number of trades at DBS Digital Exchange has more than doubled from April to the end of June, while the amount of Bitcoin bought on the stock exchange almost quadrupled. Likewise, the amount of ether, another popular token, rose by 65 percent in the same period.

"We carefully considered who we brought with us. In my opinion, we can do this for small investors, but the supervisory authorities don't necessarily see it that way," he said.

about $ 1 billion flowed from DBS into global crypto exchanges that are operated by companies such as Genesis and Bony before the bank started its own stock exchange, said Gupta. The commissioning of companies such as DBS that could introduce "guardrails" and protective measures would lead to "better results", he added.

"You can also try to create framework conditions and processes in order to make them meaningful for everyone instead of having a regulated room and a cowboy room and letting everyone go to the cowboy room."

Analysts warn that no regulatory authority can protect against market risks. "In truth, crypto is very volatile and must basically be taken over by people who understand the risk," said Nizam Ismail, founder of the Ethicom Consultancy, based in Singapore, and added that many banks would have failed.

hypothetical DBS could be safer for small investors who want to act with cryptocurrencies, but it was difficult to assess, he added.

"What we really need is a kind of check or driver's license to ensure this [Retail Investors] understand the risks. There is no such thing," said Zennon Kapron, director of Kapronasia , , a research and advisory group for financial technology. "Whether that comes from banks like the DBS is another question."