Philippine Bank to Offer Bitcoin Trading: Report

The Union Bank of the Philippines is readying to connection bitcoin and cryptocurrency trading and custody services to its customers, according to a Bloomberg report.

The determination seeks to capitalize connected the rampant adoption of specified assets successful the Asian nation, the study said, arsenic the mean capitalist successful the state is expected to clasp betwixt 3% and 5% of their idiosyncratic assets successful cryptocurrency successful 5 years. Currently, these figures are astir 1% to 2%, Cathay Casas, caput of the bank’s blockchain and exertion programming interface group, told Bloomberg.

Casas said the caller offerings correspond “a mode to future-proof our banking business,” per the report. “We are making efforts to amended our clients besides via societal media, making definite that they are safe,” she added.

The Union Bank of the Philippines offers a wide scope of fiscal services to firm and user clients, including concern management, spot banking, security brokerage, currency brokerage, and backstage banking services. It was incorporated successful 1968 and has implicit 3,000 employees.

The Union Bank of the Philippines’ custodial services for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies volition besides beryllium susceptible of encompassing tokenized bonds, Casas told Bloomberg.

According to the report, the slope became the archetypal Philippine slope to motorboat its ain stablecoin successful 2019 to supply “rural banks successful its web easier entree to remittances and payments.”

Despite the bank’s affirmative stance towards Bitcoin, the country’s cardinal slope Governor Benjamin Diokno has, according to the report, cautioned that cryptocurrencies could “pose a information to the fiscal system” arsenic they are “very vulnerable” to illicit activities.

Any mean of speech tin beryllium leveraged by criminals, and blaming the instrumentality alternatively than the idiosyncratic utilizing it is simply a fallacious argument. For instance, 1 of the largest cases of wealth laundering schemes uncovered to day progressive U.S. dollars and the planetary slope HSBC. In contrast, bitcoin’s usage for illicit activities has been in decline.