What is driving this new wave of interest in digital assets and adoption among TradFi institutions?
Ever since Bitcoin was first invented and the term “cryptocurrency” was introduced, the number of people getting into the digital assets space has been steadily growing, with the landscape of opportunities in DeFi growing massively over the few years. More recently, they have been joined by financial institutions and governments. Despite the instability of the global economy, the gap between traditional finance (TradFi) and crypto seems to be closing with each passing day.
From wealth management and foreign exchange (forex) trading, to the issuers of government securities, TradFi is having a serious look at digital assets and how to leverage blockchain technology into their products. For instance, leading banks such as HSBC and UOB have been issuing tokenised bonds on SGX's new digital platform. Additionally, JP Morgan and DBS Bank announced during the recent Singapore FinTech Festival that they have conducted trades using DeFi protocols on a public blockchain as part of the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) first pilot of Project Guardian, which explores the potential of DeFi for financial institutions.
