Singapore bank DBS in top 40 Ethereum holders with $648 million stash, Nansen finds

Blockchain analytical platform Nansen said Singapore’s largest bank, DBS, is an Ethereum whale after identifying a wallet purportedly belonging to the financial institution.

In a May 30 social media post, Nansen claimed DBS holds approximately 173,753 ETH, valued at $648 million, in the wallet address “0x9e927c02c9eadae63f5efb0dd818943c7262fb8e.” It added that the bank had made over $200 million from its ETH holdings.

Edward Wilson, Analyst at Nansen, said,

“Nansen is 100% sure this belongs to DBS – DBS owns the private key of this wallet and these assets are most likely a part of their custody solution.

This is similar to how we see institutions, both crypto-native like exchanges such as Binance or Coinbase custody funds on behalf of their users and non crypto native custody funds. The institution is the custodian and responsible for managing the security of the funds.”

Top 50

Etherscan data shows that the substantial ETH bag would place the financial institution among the top 40 holders of the second-largest digital asset by market capitalization.

This places it directly 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, otherwise dominated by major exchanges and crypto platforms such as Binance, Robinhood, Arbitrum: Bridge, and Kraken.

According to its Wikipedia page, DBS is the largest bank in Southeast Asia by assets and among the largest banks in Asia, with assets totaling S$739 billion as of December 2023. The bank’s most significant and controlling shareholder is Singapore’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, Temasek.

Customers’ assets?

Crypto community members 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 belong to the bank customers. In 2020, the bank launched a crypto trading and digital asset custody platform for security token offerings. According to its 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 report, DBS noted increased interest in the crypto market from retail investors, large-volume traders, and hedge funds.