Trading Volume Surges on DBS Digital Exchange

A shift to round-the-clock trading in August has seen trading volumes in the two months surpassing the total trading volume of the first eight months of the year by 40 percent.

DBS has reported strong growth in its digital asset ecosystem, anchored by DDEx, or the DBS Digital Exchange, which now has over S$600 million in digital assets under custody as of end-October, triple the amount recorded in the previous month, according to the bank.

The bank also said it is seeing a growing number of corporate and institutional customers among its participants, with other banks, a central bank and other digital asset exchanges among the 500 participants on the exchange.

Becoming a participant of DDEx opens many gateways for our customers to access the burgeoning cryptocurrency and digital asset economy, Eng-Kwok Seat Moey, group head of capital markets and DDEx chair, said in a statement on Thursday.

DDEx was launched in December 2020 with an initial offering that covered cryptocurrency trading. It has since issued a  bond through a security token offering (STO) on the exchange, and plans to list at least half a dozen security tokens by end-2022. The bank also launched a crypto trust offering that combined wealth planning services with emerging digital currencies, and its brokerage arm received formal approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to provide digital payment token services.

At the presentation of its third-quarter results last week, the bank’s chief executive Piyush Gupta said it is planning to open the crypto exchange to the broader retail market in 2022.

DBS previously said it expects to double the number of participants on DDEx to 1,000 and to grow its base by 20-30 percent annually for the next three years, as investments in digital tokens gain greater acceptance.