Tokyo (SCCIJ) – Sygnum from Switzerland, the world’s first digital asset bank, has found a lead investor from Japan. SBI Digital Asset Holdings put a double-digit million US dollar amount into the Zurich-based company during the latest funding round. SBI Digital Asset Holdings is the umbrella company for digital assets of the Japanese SBI Group. In December, the group announced also plans for a joint Singapore-based digital asset exchange with an arm of the Swiss Stock Exchange SIX.
The “world’s first digital asset bank”Sygnum is based in Zurich, Switzerland (Source: Pixabay CC0).
Accelerating Sygnum’s growth
With its Swiss banking license, as well as a capital markets services license in Singapore, Sygnum empowers institutional and private qualified investors, corporates, banks, and other financial institutions to invest in the digital asset economy with complete trust. SBI had established s strategic relationship with Sygnum in October 2020 with plans for an SBI-Sygnum Digital Asset Opportunity fund. This fund targets early-stage investments in digital asset startups.
With the latest fundraising round, Sygnum has raised 30 million dollars in the past six months. Such well-capitalized, Sygnum stands ready to accelerate its business into the next growth phase of its digital asset banking platform. Besides, the recent tokenization of its shares laid the foundations for a potential future public offering.
New markets in Asia and Europe
Proceeds will be used to continue the strong progress made last year to grow Sygnum’s assets under administration, which stood at over half a billion USD as of January 2021. The crypto bank wants to expand its client base of private qualified and institutional investors, banks, and other financial institutions, and venture into new markets in Europe and Asia.
The Swiss crypto bank will accelerate the launch of new products and services. They include the commercialization of its Desygnate tokenization platform and secondary market trading facility, as well as the expansion of its open banking API infrastructure. It enables banks and other market participants to offer their clients digital assets exposure with complete trust.
“Together with SBI’s deep and longstanding expertise in fintech and digital assets, we look forward to meeting the rising demand for digital assets coming from Switzerland, Singapore, and globally,” said Mathias Imbach, Sygnum Co-Founder, and Group CEO. “As a regulated and professional digital asset specialist, Sygnum is the right partner to help us deliver on our vision to make this asset class more trusted,” said Fernando Luis Vasquez Cao, SBI Digital Asset Holdings CEO.
Joint Swiss-Japanese platform
In December, the same SBI group company had joined forces with SIX Digital Exchange, an initiative of the Swiss Stock Exchange. The joint venture is set to build a regional liquidity hub for digital assets as part of a global liquidity network. The Singapore-based digital issuance platform, exchange, and central securities depository (CSD) infrastructure venue will go-live by 2022 if it receives the regulatory approvals from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The venture will market directly to regulated institutional clients, utilizing technologies from both companies to provide institutional-grade services including issuing, listing, trading, CSD infrastructure, and custody of digital assets and cryptocurrencies. It will leverage the extensive networks of SIX Digital Exchange in Switzerland and Europe, and SBI in the Asian Marketplace.
Text: Martin Fritz for SCCIJ, based on material of Sygnum and SDX
