Major bank HSBC has announced the successful enactment of a letter of credit (LC) on a blockchain in Malaysia. The transaction English language local fintech news outlet Fintech News Malaysia reported the development on Oct. 14, noting that the transaction involved packaging firm Simply Packaging importing resin from an unspecified Singaporean chemicals company. The issuing bank was HSBC Malaysia and the nominated bank was HSBC Singapore. Per the report, this is the eleventh blockchain-powered transaction carried out by HSBC and the first such pilot carried by its Malaysian branch. HSBC Malaysia CEO Stuart Milne commented on the successful test: “I …
Digital asset lender DrawBridge Lending (DBL) announced that it received funding from cryptocurrency commercial bank Galaxy Digital. A fiat-crypto lending and investing service DrawBridge announced in a press release published on Aug. 8 that it received funding from Galaxy Digital, further strengthen DBL’s fiat-crypto lending and investing capabilities. Furthermore, the two firms reportedly plan to jointly develop a co-branded special-purpose loan funding vehicle to provide structured financing against institutionally held crypto assets. Michael Novogratz, CEO and founder of Galaxy Digital, commented on the development: “The institutionalization of digital assets is still relatively nascent despite increasing momentum and interest from a …
Dutch bank ABN AMRO announced that it is launching a blockchain inventory tracking platform dubbed Forcefield in a press release published on May 17. Per the announcement, the platform is an Internet of Things solution that allows the monitoring of physical trade inventories with sensors and near-field communication chips. Forcefield was developed over the past year as a stand-alone product and became an independent company following a successful proof-of-concept that was conducted with consulting firm Accenture. The bank claims that the system can lead to more secure physical handling processes and a reduction of costs in the management of commodities …
In the past year, we’ve seen the crypto economy undergo exponential expansion as heaps of money poured into various cryptocurrencies, decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFT), crypto indices, insurance products and decentralized options markets. The total value locked (TVL) in the DeFi sector across all chains has grown from $18 billion at the beginning of 2021 to $240 billion in January 2022. With so much liquidity in the ecosystem, the crypto lending space has also grown a significant amount, from $60 million at the beginning of 2021 to over $400 million by January 2022. Despite the exponential growth and the …
Digital asset lending platform Celsius has become the first pool delegate from the centralized finance market to deploy a crypto-centric lending service on Maple Finance, utilizing the latter’s smart contract and blockchain infrastructure to facilitate a $30 million pool to institutional investors. Celsius succeeds existing pool delegates BlockTower, Orthogonal Trading, Maven 11 and Alameda Research in partnering with Maple on such an endeavor. The introduction of wrapped Ether (wETH) is set to complement the existing accessibility to trade Circle’s native stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC), enabling investors to utilize the asset across an array of trading components, including staking, lending and …