Singapore’s largest financial institution is extending its blockchain technique by providing tokenized structured notes on the Ethereum public blockchain, in a transfer that broadens entry to advanced monetary merchandise as soon as reserved for its non-public purchasers.
DBS mentioned in a press launch on Thursday that it’s going to distribute the devices via native Singapore exchanges ADDX, DigiFT and HydraX, marking its first time providing tokenized merchandise to accredited and institutional traders outdoors its personal consumer base.
The debut product is a crypto-linked participation observe that pays out in money when digital asset costs rise, whereas limiting draw back publicity.
Structured notes historically carry minimal investments of $100,000 and are sometimes custom-made, making them non-fungible.
By tokenizing every instrument into $1,000 models, DBS mentioned the securities turn into fungible and simpler to commerce, providing better flexibility for portfolio administration.
Demand for such devices has been robust as traders search to include superior funding methods of their digital asset portfolios, the financial institution mentioned in a launch.
Within the first half of 2025, DBS purchasers executed over $1 billion of trades involving these devices, with commerce volumes rising virtually 60% from Q1 2025 to Q2 2025.
The financial institution sees this as notably helpful for household places of work {and professional} traders, which have grown quickly in Singapore. The variety of single-family places of work within the city-state topped 2,000 in 2024, up 43% yr on yr, it mentioned in a launch.
The transfer comes as Singapore deepens its position as a hub for tokenized finance. The Financial Authority of Singapore (MAS) has been advancing business pilots via Undertaking Guardian, which explores tokenization of belongings throughout mounted earnings, FX and funds, whereas creating cross-border infrastructure like World Layer One to pool world liquidity.
DBS has been one of the crucial energetic banks taking part in these initiatives, usually utilizing permissioned blockchains for pilots earlier than increasing into public chains.
Whereas the preliminary focus is on crypto-linked notes, DBS mentioned it’s going to additionally tokenize extra conventional equity- and credit-linked notes.
“Asset tokenization is the following frontier of monetary markets infrastructure,” mentioned Li Zhen, head of international change and digital belongings at DBS.
“Our first tokenized product addresses the rising institutional urge for food for digital belongings. With this initiative, a broader section of traders can now faucet our digital asset ecosystem to construct publicity to the asset class,” Zhen continued.