Standard Chartered’s Crypto Arm Launches Crypto Staking Service for Institutional Investors
The digital asset arm of British traditional finance giant Standard Chartered, Zodia Custody, has unveiled a new offering allow cryptocurrency investors to generate income from their holdings via staking.
The financial giant’s subsidiary, which is in the cryptocurrency custody business, revealed it struck a deal with Singapore’s blockchain tech giant OpenEden, which paves the way for the “Zodia Custody Yield” program allowing institutional investors to earn income on their holdings.
The firm noted that the partnership comes amid an uptick in demand for transparent, liquid, and minimal risk digital asset solutions. Per the firm, institutions will be able to access the real-world yield from US Treasury bills through the OpenEden platform, which “provides on-chain security and transparency on real world assets managed by regulated fund managers.”
Jeremy Ng, a co-founder at OpenEden, emphasized the potential this program holds, particularly for stablecoin owners, noting there are “billions of dollars worth of stablecoins sitting on the sidelines when they could easily be generating yields for investors.”
Per OpenEden’s co-founders these billions represent a huge opportunity that the service is looking to address, allowing issuers and investors “ to enter the digital asset market through tokenized financial products, in a way that is both safe and transparent.”
Zodia’s announcement of the service and its alliance with OpenEden follows its accolade of being the inaugural bank-affiliated entity to offer digital asset custody for financial powerhouses in Singapore.
As CryptoGlobe reported, earlier this year Standard Chartered suggested that the price of BTC could surge to $50,000 this year, and could breach the $120,000 by 2024’s close.
Back in April, the banking giant made waves in the market with its prediction of Bitcoin reaching $100,000 by the end of 2024, asserting a conclusion to the bleak “crypto winter”.
Geoff Kendrick, one of Standard Chartered’s leading foreign exchange analysts, has now voiced an optimistic revision to that forecast, citing a 20% “upside” in the bank’s earlier call. The increased upside was related to increased miner profitability per BTC, which “means they can sell less while maintaining cash inflows.”
In turn, according to Kendrick, this will reduce the net BTC supply and push the price of the cryptocurrency higher, as Reuters reported.
Featured image via Pixabay.
