JPMorgan, DBS Bank, SBI Complete Live Defi Trades on Public Blockchain – Regulating Bitcoin News

JPMorgan, DBS Bank and SBI Digital Asset Holdings have completed their first live trades on a public blockchain using decentralized finance (defi), tokenized deposits and verifiable credentials overseen by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Singapore’s central bank is planning two more pilots involving Standard Chartered Bank, HSBC and UOB.

JPMorgan, DBS Bank, SBI, Standard Chartered Bank, HSBC, UOB Participating in MAS Digital Asset Pilots

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Singapore’s central bank, announced on Wednesday that “the first industry pilot under MAS’s Project Guardian exploring potential decentralized finance applications (defi) in wholesale funding markets has completed its first direct trades.”

The announcement describes that for this pilot:

DBS Bank, JP Morgan and SBI Digital Asset Holdings executed foreign exchange and government bond transactions against liquidity pools consisting of tokenized Singapore government securities bonds, Japanese government bonds, Japanese yen (JPY) and Singapore dollar (SGD).

The Singapore central bank’s Project Guardian was announced in May. The regulator explained that since then “it has engaged the financial services industry to identify key areas for collaboration.”

The announcement further reveals:

MAS launches two new industry pilots.

The first focuses on trade finance. “Standard Chartered Bank is leading an initiative to explore the issuance of tokens linked to trade finance assets,” MAS outlined. “The project aims to digitize the trade distribution market by transforming trade assets into transferable instruments that are more transparent and accessible to investors.”

The second pilot focuses on asset management. “HSBC and UOB are working with Marketnode to enable native digital issuance of wealth management products, improving issuance efficiency and accessibility for investors,” the central bank described.

MAS Chief Fintech Officer Sopnendu Mohanty commented: “The live pilots led by industry participants show that with appropriate guardrails in place, digital assets and decentralized finance have the potential to transform capital markets. This is a major step towards enabling more efficient and integrated global financial networks.” The official added:

Project Guardian has deepened MAS’s understanding of the digital asset ecosystem and contributed to the development of Singapore’s digital asset strategy.

Following the MAS announcement, Tyrone Lobban, JPMorgan’s head of blockchain launch and Onyx Digital Assets, explained on Linkedin that the global investment bank has “performed its first LIVE trade on public blockchain using defi, tokenized deposits and verifiable credentials as part by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)’s project watchdog.”

He described: “This is a massive step forward towards a future where finance can take place in a compliant manner on public blockchain using public defi protocols. The beginning of institutional defi is here.” Lobban added:

This is the world’s first bank-issued tokenized deposit and the first trade of regulated financial institutions using W3C verifiable credentials for compliant access to defi on public blockchain.

“To achieve this, we used a modified version of Aave on the Polygon Technology blockchain to conduct a trade of tokenized SGD for JPY with SBI Holdings LLC. And we built a digital identity solution that combines proof of identity with trade instructions for ‘on chain’ verification, and opens up a world of composable, pluggable identity, the JPMorgan CEO concluded.

What do you think about these banks running defi trades? Let us know in the comments section below.

Kevin Helms

A student of Austrian economics, Kevin found Bitcoin in 2011 and has been an evangelist ever since. His interests lie in Bitcoin security, open source systems, network effects and the intersection of economics and cryptography.