Based in Singapore, South East Asia’s biggest bank (DBS), has announced the launch of a

Digital Exchange, backed by the bank, offering institutions and HNWs access to be able to trade and provide custody services for digital assets and digital currencies. DBS Bank will also be offering the ability for companies to raise capital via tokenisation (STOs), as well as offering a listing service for these new tokenised digital assets. The Singapore Exchange will own 10% of this new digital exchange, which has been given (in principle) approval by the Monetary Authority of Singapore as an ‘approved exchange’. This type of status is vital if institutions are to engage and start trading assets on DBS’s new digital exchange. The exchange will offer trading in cryptos (such as BTC, ETH, XRP and Bitcoin cash) as well as tokenising unlisted companies, bonds and private equity funds, so providing liquidity and hopefully greater price transparency for these existing asset classes.

DBS Digital Exchange

Source: DBS.com

Earlier this year, Northern Trust used Blockchain technology to issue BondbloX, a bond using the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Sandbox as Singapore is desperately positioning itself to be the digital centre in Asia.

Meanwhile in Europe, a company called Zodia Custody (based in London) has been established as a JV with between Standard Chartered and Northern Trust and will be their new digital asset custody service. It is expected that Zodia will be launched in 2021 and will be focusing initially on offering custody services for those who wish to use a third party to hold their crypto currencies. In Barcelona, a company called Brickken is launching a digital assets platform targeting those start-ups and small businesses looking to raise up to €150,000. Brickken offers a full tokenisation service so is able to help firms wishing to raise capital, done either via a utility token or a security one. Once the tokens have been issued Brickken lists them on its platform, enabling third parties to buy, sell and trade them. Under EU laws, Brickken is required to carry out full KYC and AML checks and will, initially, only be able to list those tokens it has listed. However, this appears to be a new way for smaller firms to raise the often much-needed capital thus enabling them to transition from an idea to a revenue-generating business. According to Statista, there are just over 15,000 companies in Spain which employ 50-249 people, but there are 2.6 million companies employing less than 10 people in Spain, so Brickken has a large market to target.

Alipay and Tencent’s grip on digital payments in China

Source: TechCrunch.com

Furthermore, the Chinese government has already initiated promotion of its CBDC, having given away the equivalent of $30 of its new digital currency to 50,000 citizens, randomly selecting those who reside in the city of Shenzhen. The government is also giving away another $30 to 100,000 of its citizens, but this time to those living in Suzhou. In the last ‘giveaway’, people had 4 days to use or lose their $30, so presumably this second ‘freebee’ will have similar restrictions. According to Pakistan’s Technology Times ,the use of China’s digital yuan is gathering momentum as, in just the last month, “more than 2 billion yuan had been spent using China’s digital currency so far in 4 million separate transactions”.