Southeast Asia’s largest bank announced—and then hastily unpublished—the launch of an on-ramp for Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and Bitcoin Cash.
DBS, the largest bank in Southeast Asia by way of assets, has published—and then removed— an announcement that it’s launching a fiat-to-cryptocurrency exchange for Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP.
The hastily-deleted announcement revealed that “DBS Digital Exchange” is backed by the Singapore-based commercial and retail bank, and by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Cat’s out of the baghttps://t.co/cz473xsPFd pic.twitter.com/584o7PFGv6
— Fiat Minimalist (@fiatminimalist) October 27, 2020
According to the announcement, the exchange will not hold any cryptocurrencies:
“Unlike most digital exchanges today, DBS Digital Exchange does not hold any digital assets. Instead, all digital assets are kept at DBS Bank, which is globally recognized for its custodial services.”
The bank has deployed an institutional-grade custody solution, DBS Digital Custody, to safeguard customer assets, said the announcement.
DBS Digital Exchange also plans to support security tokens (which are “listed cryptographic tokens backed by real assets such as equities, physical properties, fixed income instruments, and even fine art”) in the future.
Industry observers welcomed the news (before the announcement was removed.)
DBS, the largest retail and commercial bank in Singapore, has soft launched their crypto/fiat trading exchange!
This will immediately become the easiest on-ramp for those who bank in Singapore
BTC, BCH, ETH, XRP the listed crypto assets
SGD, HKD, JPY, USD the listed fiat https://t.co/u0Zxolf1OM
— Su Zhu (@zhusu) October 27, 2020
“This will immediately become the easiest on-ramp for those who bank in Singapore,” tweeted Su Zhu, CEO of Singapore-based cryptocurrency fund, Three Arrows Capital.
DBS, the largest retail and commercial bank in Singapore, has soft launched their crypto/fiat trading exchange.
Not sure if the #BTC is transferrable yet, but regardless a step in the right direction. pic.twitter.com/e9Sommp5iS
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) October 27, 2020
“Not sure if the #BTC is transferrable yet, but regardless a step in the right direction,” said Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange by market cap.
The DBS move complements a string of good tidings hitting the cryptocurrency industry recently: last week, PayPal announced it would integrate crypto, and earlier this month, MicroStrategy, a publicly-traded business intelligence company and Jack Dorsey’s mobile payments firm Square announced major investments in Bitcoin.
This is a breaking story and will be updated as news comes in.
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