Blockchain analytics platform Nansen said Singapore’s largest bank DBS is an Ethereum whale after identifying a wallet allegedly owned by the financial institution.
On social media from May 30 after, Nansen claimed that DBS holds approximately 173,753 ETH, worth $648 million, in the wallet address “0x9e927c02c9eadae63f5efb0dd818943c7262fb8e.” It added that the bank had made more than $200 million from its ETH holdings.
Edward Wilson, analyst at Nansen, said:
“Nansen is 100% certain this is owned by DBS – DBS holds the private key to this wallet and these assets are most likely part of their custody solution.
This is similar to how we see institutions, both crypto-native like exchanges like Binance or Coinbase custodial funds on behalf of their users and non-crypto-native custodian funds. The institution is the custodian and responsible for managing the security of the funds.”
Top 50
Etherscan facts shows that the substantial ETH bag would place the financial institution among the top 40 holders of the second largest digital assets by market capitalization.
This puts it right behind wallets belonging to centralized exchanges like 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 crypto platforms like Binance, Robinhood, Arbitrum: Bridge and Kraken.
According to his Wikipedia pageDBS is the largest bank in Southeast Asia by assets and one of the largest banks in Asia, with assets worth a total of S$739 billion as of December 2023. The bank’s main and controlling shareholder is Singapore’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, Temasek.
Customer assets?
Members of the Crypto Community said DBS’s ETH ownership was further evidence that institutional investors are increasingly interested in crypto as a legitimate asset class.
However, some have speculated that the ETH could be owned by the bank customers. In 2020, the bank launched a cryptocurrency trading and digital asset custody platform for offering security tokens. According to his website:
“DBS Digital Exchange offers trading services between four fiat currencies (SGD, USD, HKD, JPY) and six of the more established cryptocurrencies, namely Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Polkadot, Cardano and XRP.”
In a recent one reportDBS noted increased interest in the crypto market from retail investors, large traders and hedge funds.