Standard Chartered is planning to provide custody services for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) to institutional clients in Dubai starting in the first quarter of 2024. Waqar Chaudry, executive director of innovation at Standard Chartered, said in an interview: Back in 2018, when places like Singapore and the United Arab Emirates were busy with crypto asset inquiries, some other regions didn’t even differentiate between secure and non-secure status when it came to crypto assets. For this reason, we are now seeing differences in market maturity, with places such as the UAE, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong taking more aggressive action. Technically, the Dubai International Financial Center allows us to serve clients around the world, which is a good thing.
Standard Chartered Bank plans to create cryptocurrency settlement network
In March this year, due to the multiple backgrounds of a large number of user withdrawals (the FTX thunderstorm was the fuse), the Federal Reserve’s violent interest rate hikes, and pressure from US regulators, the crypto industry lost three important crypto-friendly banks: Signature Bank, SVB and Silvergate.
Originally, they allowed cryptocurrency exchanges, institutions and customers to exchange fiat currencies such as US dollars and euros in real time, but successive failures have made the entrance for fiat currencies into the crypto market increasingly narrow.
Perhaps seeing that this huge demand has not been properly met, Standard Chartered Bank also stated that it is planning to create a cryptocurrency settlement mechanism. Chaudry added: After companies like us enter the market, network effects will be formed quickly, rather than relying on Based on a single banking network, this is different from the networks established by recently failed institutions for the cryptocurrency market.