Arab Bank Swiss branch quietly enters DeFi

Arab Bank Switzerland, partner of Arab Bank PLC, a Middle East-based, Geneva-based lender, broadened the focus of asset investors on the cryptocurrency offering, including 10 financial management token cores (Challenge).

The bank, which began offering cryptocurrency monitoring and brokerage services to Bitcoin and Ethereum in 2019, announced Thursday that we have added support. . ), polygon (MATIC), graph (GRT), curve (CRV), UNIswap (UNI) and financial (YFI).

Another step in the description of the business is the banks offering DeFi tokens to their customers. Recently, Aave announced the announcement of Aave Arc, a free list of plans managed by hosting company Fireblocks.

When companies like Bitwise offer DeFi funds, it's hard to find another bank with regular DeFi coins at their expense. (Some new targeted cryptocurrency banks in Switzerland, such as Sygnum and SEBA Bank, have already registered DeFi tokens.)

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The Swiss branch of Arab Bank was established in 1962 as the first international branch of Arab Banking Group. In 2018, the Group's assets amounted to $ 49 billion. The Swiss company has $ 5 billion in assets under management, the spokesperson said.

In addition to hosting BTC and ETH, Arab Bank Switzerland also offers staking services on the Tezos blockchain.

Romain Braud, the bank's head of digital assets, said providing DeFi tokens to consumers is the first step towards greater involvement in the monetization process.

“Our current intention is to allow our customers to buy, sell and hold some of the most popular DeFi tokens,” Braud said in an interview. “But we believe that financial institutions will always be transformed by this process in the future, and we want to be part of that change. So in the future we want to understand these decentralized services.

Braud differs from some newer cryptocurrency banks as the Swiss branch of Arab Bank is part of a wealthy group and still has ties to the Middle East.

Braud said: “We have a lot of clients who are still in the Middle East,” Braud said.