Singapore's DBS Bank is to launch a fiat to crypto exchange subject to regulatory acceptance.
Now this is a big thing for several reasons -
Not only is DBS the largest bank in Singapore but it is the largest in ALL of SE Asia
Largest shareholders in DBS are Citibank, HSBC and Paribas - that covers every continent excepting Australasia and parts of Africa.
The Singapore Government is a major shareholder through Temasek meaning that regulatory acceptance should be a breeze.
DBS was named Bank of the Year 2018, 2019 and 2020 by Global Finance ie. It is a considered a leader in its field.
Institutions have a new liquid safe haven (bye gold .....finally)
It plans to launch STOs on this exchange and that is a WOOOO.
This exchange will not trade at the weekend and will only trade 9am - 4pm same as normal exchanges. This limited exposure suggests that this is possibly a pilot of some sort testing the waters for the shareholder banks, HSBC, Citibank and Paribas and/or The Singapore Government itself. If so it means that onboarding and offboarding is going to be a lot easier for all of us putting paid to the HRKYC that suffocates the sector.
Binance and Coinbase should be wetting themselves about now.
The Singapore Government getting in on the act could signify that they are looking at issuing a digital national cryptocurrency but the real fun is the launching of STOs on the exchange. This straight up combines stocks and crypto bypassing traditional exchanges thus creating Big Bang 2.0. This would dwarf Big Bang 1.0 by several factors truly bring trading (and capitalism) into the grasp of ordinary people. It would also put paid to the "is it a security, asset, commodity, currency argument" as STOs are clearly a security. The US is going to have to get its act together otherwise it will be left behind in the dirt as business just packs its bags and moves overseas.
What with the other big news being that JP Morgan has launched its stable coin in the the future we will be looking back on today and saying that October 27 2020 was when it all took off and the embers of the Great Bull Run were set.