Nansen said Singaporean bank DBS is among the top 40 Ethereum holders, with $648 million in custody assets.

Nansen, a blockchain analysis platform, revealed that DBS, Singapore’s largest bank, is an Ethereum whale after identifying a wallet believed to be owned by a financial institution.

In a social media post on May 30, Nansen claimed that DBS holds 173,753 ETH worth approximately $648 million in the wallet address “0x9e927c02c9eadae63f5efb0dd818943c7262fb8e.” The bank added that it earned more than $200 million from its ETH holdings.

Nansen analyst Edward Wilson said:

“Nansen is 100% confident that this belongs to DBS. DBS owns the private keys of these wallets and these assets are likely to be part of the custody solution.

This is similar to how we view crypto-backed custodian funds and institutions like cryptocurrency-backed custodian funds like Binance or Coinbase custodian funds acting on behalf of users. The institution is the custodian and is responsible for managing the security of the funds.”

However, a DBS Bank spokesperson said: CryptoSlate:

“DBS does not have a position on our books in relation to the posts.”

Top 50

A significant ETH bag would place the financial institution in the top 40 of the second-largest digital asset holders by market capitalization, according to Etherscan data.

This places it right behind wallets belonging to centralized exchanges such as Crypto.com and Bybit’s Hot Wallet 1. Notably, DBS is the only traditional financial institution on this list, which is otherwise dominated by major exchanges and cryptocurrency platforms such as Binance, Robinhood, and Arbitrum: Bridge. , Kraken.

According to its Wikipedia page, DBS is the largest bank in Southeast Asia and one of the largest banks in Asia by assets. As of December 2023, it has total assets of S$739 billion. The bank’s most important and controlling shareholder is Temasek, Singapore’s Sovereign Wealth Fund.

Customer’s assets?

Crypto community members said DBS’ ownership of ETH is further evidence that institutional investors are increasingly interested in cryptocurrencies as a legitimate asset class.

However, some have speculated that ETH may belong to bank customers. In 2020, the bank launched a cryptocurrency trading and digital asset custody platform for security token offerings. According to the website:

“DBS Digital Exchange provides trading services between four fiat currencies (SGD, USD, HKD, JPY) and six cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Polkadot, Cardano and XRP).”

In a recent report, DBS noted increased interest in the cryptocurrency market from retail investors, large traders and hedge funds.

Update May 30: The story has been updated to include a statement from DBS.