SBI Digital Asset Holdings, SIX Exchange Announce Joint Venture in Singapore
- The new joint venture aims to establish an institutional corridor between Europe and Asia.
- The platform will allow issuing, listing, and trading of digital assets, as well as provide other crypto-related services such as custody.
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Tokyo-based financial services company, SBI Holdings, and Switzerland’s’ principal stock exchange, SIX Swiss Exchange, announced plans for a joint venture this Tuesday during the Singapore Fintech Festival.
The platform is set to launch in 2022, right after Singapore’s primary financial regulator — the Monetary Authority of Singapore — gives the green light.
The new joint venture will offer a wide gamma of digital asset-related services, utilizing technology from both founding companies. These services include issuing, listing, trading, and custody of cryptocurrency. The new platform will also provide Central Securities Depository (CSD) infrastructure and regulated digital asset securities.
Both enterprises are involved in the digital asset market through subsidiaries — SIX Digital Exchange and SBI Digital Asset Holdings — and have operated extensive networks in Switzerland and Europe (SIX) and Asia (SBI).
According to SBI Group’s CEO, Yoshitaka Kitao, the new project will form an impressive institutional corridor between Europe and Asia. Kitao added that the new venture is “an important step in building the necessary global infrastructure for widespread institutional adoption of digital assets”.
Thomas Zeeb, SIX Digital Exchange chairman, feels that this partnership comes quite naturally because of SBI’s strong position in Asia and its history of developing institutional digital asset markets.
- The requirement to deposit customer assets into a statutory trust comes as a result of a MAS public consultation from October 2022 focused on reducing risk in crypto trading.
- Singapore’s central bank also restricted crypto firms from facilitating lending and staking to retail customers, though the services are still available to institutional clients.
Monetary Authority of Singapore building. The Straits Times
- Crypto.com has once again expanded its regulatory achievements with the acquisition of a major payment institution license for digital payment token services in Singapore.
- The license, for which the company received an in-principle approval last June, enables the exchange to provide a greater range of payment services in Singapore.
- The now rebranded custody arm of crypto exchange Binance, called Ceffu, is planning to apply for a Capital Markets Service license with the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
- If it is able to acquire the license, Ceffy plans to offer custodial services to only institutional and high net-worth individuals in Singapore.