A now-deleted webpage announcing that Singapore’s largest bank is planning to launch a “digital exchange” supporting crypto asset trading is the latest sign of increasing institutional adoption of virtual currencies. The document, which appeared briefly on the DBS website, announced the new exchange will support Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum Classic, (ETC), and Ripple (XRP), alongside the fiat currencies of Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, and The United States. The announcement also noted plans to support asset-backed security tokens. Speaking to Cointelegraph, JST Capital co-founder Todd Morakis, described the move as a likely catalyst for other major banks …

Singapore-based multinational banking firm DBS Bank has joined the blockchain trade-finance network Contour, which is built over R3’s Corda. Contour is due for a main-launch later this year. According to a May 11 report by the business news outlet The Business Times, DBS Bank is the first bank from Singapore to join the network. Major institutions such as BNP Paribas, Bangkok Bank, ING, HSBC, Standard Chartered and Citi Ventures founded Contour. Digitizing for efficiency DBS looks forward to digitizing its end-to-end letters of credit settlement process through the platform’s blockchain solutions. The bank aims to reduce settlement time, decrease the …

Global financial messaging network, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), is carrying out a blockchain-based shareholder e-voting proof-of-concept (PoC) with major financial institutions. SWIFT announced the news in a press release published on March 6. Per the press release, the PoC will be jointly conducted in the Asia Pacific region with Deutsche Bank, DBS, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, securities software provider SLI and the Singapore Exchange (SGX). The test is meant to establish whether distributed ledger technology (DLT) can simplify the management of shareholder meetings. More precisely, the test, which is set to run during the first half …