By
Chimamanda U. Martha
November 2nd, 2023
SBI Digital Asset Holdings partners with SIX Digital Exchange to leverage crypto explosion in Singapore, further catering to the Asia-Pacific.
SBI Digital Asset Holdings, an SBI Holding subsidiary, announced a partnership with Switzerland’s SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) to launch a joint crypto venture set up in Singapore via a crypto issuance company. In addition, the crypto platform looks to become a regional liquidity facilitator for institutions. This also entails facilitating institutional connections between Europe and Asia.
Currently, many of these institutional clients already use market expertise and technologies from both SIX and SBI. Furthermore, the digital asset exchange will launch in 2022, subject to regulatory approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
Yoshitaka Kitao, the chief executive officer at SBI Holdings issued a statement on the development:
“This is an important step in building the necessary global infrastructure for widespread institutional adoption of digital assets. Together with SDX‘s strength in Switzerland and our planned digital exchange in Osaka, this venture will establish a powerful institutional corridor between Europe and Asia.”
Details of the SBI and SIX Joint Crypto Venture in Singapore
This collaborative effort between SBI and SIX intends to capitalize on the growing demand for digital currencies in Singapore and the Asia-Pacific region. In addition, the project will offer a range of digital asset products and services in its offerings. These include issuance, listing, trading, on-chain central securities depository (CSD), and custody of digital assets and crypto. Furthermore, the joint crypto venture will also reportedly use technologies from both SBI and SIX.
Reports emphasize that joint initiative will not focus solely on crypto even if the outlook may suggest otherwise. Instead, it will also offer native assets issued with distributed ledger technology (DLT). Some of these include digital bonds, digital equities, and digital securitized loans.
SDX chairman Thomas Zeeb also weighed in on the planned initiative, referring to the SBI Group as a “natural partner.” He made this assertion on the premise of the latter’s strong position in Asia, as well as its expertise in the institutional digital asset market. Zeeb also pointed to his own company’s (SIX) credentials and antecedents saying:
“As the operator of a financial market infrastructure in both Switzerland and Spain, SIX has significant experience in delivering trusted and secure capabilities to institutional capital markets, and we look forward to bringing the best of SIX to our partnership with SBI in Asia, which we see as a strategically important region for growth.”
Singapore is one of the countries across the globe to emerge as a crypto hub over the last few years. It has served as an enabling environment for prominent crypto exchanges, including Binance, Huobi, Coinbase, and FTX.
Prior to this recent project, SBI had made another major move within the digital assets’ environment. Back in November, the Japanese financial services group launched a crypto lending service for Bitcoin (BTC), to operate through SBI VC Trade, SBI’s crypto arm. Although it only deals with BTC, the project stated that services catering to ETH and XRP would soon follow.