Big Banks Are Setting Up To Trade Bitcoin, Forex and Other Digital Assets

State Street, the second oldest bank in the USA, is going to interchange its Forex infrastructure to create a bank-grade platform for digital assets – set to go live in the middle of the year.

State Street Corporation, the parent company of State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) is the world’s fourth-largest investment management corporation, with approximately $3.5 trillion assets under management (AUM), and $38.8 trillion under custody and administration. It’s also the second-largest custodian bank in the world.

According to a press release from Pressat, Pure Digital has made an agreement with State Street to use Currenex, a cutting-edge trading technology, as the backbone for their “new and unique wholesale digital currency trading platform”.

We are excited to partner with Currenex, an industry leader in FX, on this initiative; as we work to transpose FX infrastructure to the crypto space via a bank-led consortium.

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Lauren Kiley, CEO of Pure Digital

A Platform Specifically For Banks

The Pure Digital trading platform will be the first of its kind, offering a wholesale inter-bank market for Tier 1 investment banks to trade bitcoin and other digital assets. Pure Digital is in discussions with several other Tier 1 investment banks to use the platform.

The platform will be an over-the-counter (OTC) offering with bilateral credit lines and full transparency so that the banks can see exactly who they’re dealing with. When asked whether they would be using the platform for their own crypto trading, Kiley replied:

That is the intention – State Street is one of the many banks that will be using this platform and we are looking at midway through 2021, although no date is set.

Lauren Kiley, CEO of Pure Digital

Big Banks Are Starting to Offer Crypto Services

Now that other big banks like BNY Mellon, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley have dipped their toes in crypto. The eyes have been on State Street now, as one of the biggest U.S. custody providers and trading operations, to see if it would move into crypto as well.

It (cryptocurrency) needs large balance financial institutions involved in the manufacturing process of price. The primary market doesn’t really exist. There’s a lot of disparate exchanges out there with different rules of engagement and systems. And this manifests itself in very fragmented market data.

Campbell Adams, founder of Pure Digital

The boost that these big institutions give to the cryptocurrency industry through investing in it and making it available for others to invest in is a major help to the ecosystem.  On the other hand, banks need to cater to the needs of their customers, and if they fail to do so they may become irrelevant.

Currently no Australian banks offer crypto services, but will we see this happen in 2021?