Standard Chartered to Launch Crypto Trading Platform for Institutions

Sources claim London-based bank Standard Chartered has partnered with various crypto exchanges to create a crypto trading platform targeted at institutional investors.

“Standard Chartered plus five of the biggest traders in digital assets and four exchanges are about to get this new model started. I think the first test trade will be next month and I’d say it’ll end up involving the 10 biggest exchanges in digital,” said one source. 

The Bank is said to be working with five major over-the-counter traders and four crypto-exchanges on a trading platform targeted at institutional investors. This comes at a time of heightened interest in cryptocurrencies by investment institutions as an alternative asset.

Some of the firms included in the deal are UK-based financial technology company LMAX, crypto exchange ErisX, Switzerland-based custody provider METACO and UK-based trading technology provider Cobalt. The latter two boast Standard Chartered investment.

The sources reported that all the named firms declined to comment on the claim. The source claims that there were major calls for the use of The Linux Foundation‘s Hyperledger and R3 Consortium’s Corda. Opting for something the “native crypto community are comfortable with”, the source asserts that the settlement token chosen for the platform is modeled after Ethereum‘s ERC-20. The token has also been likened to Caitlin Long’s Avanti Financial-issued Avit.

“We are building our own token of fiat collateral and hoping that will become the equivalent of Tether, except that the tokenized collateral or money will be held in the trading bank account of a proper bank, like a Standard Chartered, a JPMorgan, a Deutsche Bank,” the source said.

It was reported in July this year that Standard Chartered’s Singapore-based innovations platform, SC Ventures, was working on a ‘crypto custodial initiative’

Standard Chartered Chief Officer Bill Summers spoke at the virtual Singapore FinTech Festival. Also in attendance at the event were Singapore-based DBS Bank CEO Piyush Gupta and Calvin Choi, Chairman and CEO of Hong Kong-based AMTD Group.

In his address at the five-day event, Summers opined that there was enough room on the global market for both state-issued and private digital currencies. He added that the financial institution would, in the next few days, make an announcement “along these lines”.

The London financial institution is involved in various crypto-centric projects. One of the most recently announced being the Travel Rule Protocol’s Anti Money Laundering solution. The first version was released in early October.

Standard Chartered joins a growing number of financial service providers taking an interest in digital currencies and crypto projects.