UK’s major commercial bank, Standard Chartered Bank (SCB), has successfully launched its crypto brokerage services and facilities for Irish crypto investors by establishing a brokerage firm by the name “Zodiac Custody” in Ireland. SCB’s crypto brokerage will aim at obtaining major institutional clients because the soil of Ireland has become a breeding ground for crypto companies as well as financial institutions who are interested in crypto.
A Crypto brokerage firm backed by one of the UK’s major financial institutions namely Standard Chartered Bank (SCB), has been launched in Ireland. The brokerage firm has been funded and founded by itself from where SCB wishes to obtain institutional clients willing to adopt crypto. The brokerage firm established by SCB has been named “Zodiac Custody” which will operate as a crypto exchange platform.
SC Ventures is a company that is 100% owned and controlled by SCB. This company was established with the assistance of a US company called Northern Trust for the purposes of exploring the blockchain and the crypto industry. Zodiac Custody is in fact one of the projects of SC Ventures. Both, SC Ventures as well as Northern Trust have been actively participating in digitalization through investing in the industry. Both companies as partners are lending services to institutions for helping them investing in virtual assets.
It has been informed that Zodiac Custody will be rendering services such as crypto custodial and management services. The institutional clients who are willing to utilize the custodial services of Zodiac Custody can deposit their virtual assets with Zodiac Custody. For the time being, custodial services of Zodiac Custody include currencies such as Bitcoin, Ripple, Etheruem, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin.
SCB told that Zodiac Custody has been launched because in Ireland there has been a growing interest with regard to crypto adoption. As a matter of fact, this growing interest is because of huge institutional involvement. This is why SCB wanted to capitalize on the growing crypto institutional market in Ireland.
SCB said that acquiring crypto is relatively an easy task as compared to ensuring virtual assets’ safe-keeping. In the past, there have been many occasions where institutionally owned crypto funds and assets were stolen. On the other hand, the crypto market hasn’t been able to provide investor protection as well. In these situations, usually, the banking platforms are very strong which provide utmost security and safe-keeping of customer’s funds and assets. Being one of the major global banks, SCB too has a high standard security system installed. The crypto brokerage and custodial firm of SCB would also be using the same security standard as has been available to each SCB’s customer.
On the other hand, Ireland has been treated as the breeding ground for crypto adopters and crypto exchanges. Because the country has a crypto-friendly climate, foreign crypto exchanges are focusing on Ireland and therefore the institutional sector as well.
