The Monetary Authority of Singapore has granted Sygnum AG in-principle approval to offer crypto brokerage services to fund houses, family offices, and institutions.
Sygnum AG, a digital-asset bank in Singapore, is gearing up to launch its crypto brokerage service in Singapore after obtaining in-principle approval from the local regulator.
The bank reported a high demand for crypto transactions from fund houses, family offices, and institutions in the region.
On June 13, Sygnum announced that it received in-principle approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) for a Major Payment Institution Licence (MPIL).
The license will enable Sygnum Singapore to provide digital token brokerage services to its clients.
According to Gerald Goh, co-founder, and CEO of Sygnum Singapore, the license will activate the regulated crypto brokerage service launch, which will matchmake quotes from clients by aggregating bid-offer data from market makers through the bank in Switzerland.
“A lot of our demand right now is coming from web3 or crypto fund managers who, as part of their regulated fund management activities, have a business reason to be buying or selling digital assets, including cryptocurrencies,”
Goh said in a press release.He added that the license would also permit Sygnum customers to trade, send, and receive crypto and fiat money. However, it will not cover fiat-to-crypto and crypto-to-fiat conversion services.
The growing interest in crypto
Sygnum’s plans in Singapore come amid a surge in interest in crypto from prospective clients following the US banking crisis.
As of the end of May, client assets, which include deposits of digital tokens and fiat money, reached an “all-time high” of over 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.3 billion), according to Goh.
Sygnum is one of the first banks to offer regulated banking services for digital assets. It holds a banking and securities dealer license from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) and a capital markets services license from MAS.
The bank offers a range of services for crypto investors, such as custody, trading, lending, borrowing, staking, tokenization, and asset management.
It supports several cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Tezos (XTZ), Cardano (ADA), Aave (AAVE), and Uniswap (UNI).
Sygnum also recently launched a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform called Desygnate, which allows users to create and invest in tokenized assets on the blockchain.
