Standard Chartered launches bitcoin, ether spot trading for institutional clients

HONG KONG (Reuters) -Standard Chartered will allow institutional clients to trade bitcoin and ether through its UK branch, the bank said on Tuesday, becoming what it said was the first global systemically important bank to offer such crypto services.

Some financial institutions have said they are seeing more client demand for crypto products as the price of bitcoin hits record highs, helped by U.S. President Donald Trump's pro-crypto stance.

Institutional clients around the world, including corporates, investors and asset managers, will be able to conduct spot crypto trading through Standard Chartered's existing platforms, and will soon be offered non-deliverable forwards trading, the bank said in a statement.

Standard Chartered already offers crypto products, including trading, via two independent subsidiary companies: Zodia Markets and Zodia Custody. Zodia Markets allows clients to trade more than 70 crypto assets, a spokesperson for Standard Chartered said.

"As client demand accelerates further, we want to offer clients a route to transact, trade and manage digital asset risk safely and efficiently within regulatory requirements," Chief Executive Bill Winters said in the statement.

Crypto asset markets have gradually recovered in recent years, after a series of crypto company bankruptcies in 2022 revealed widespread misconduct across the nascent industry and left millions of investors out of pocket.

The U.S. House of Representatives is set to pass a series of crypto-related bills this week, which the Republican majority has dubbed "crypto week".

Some U.S. banks are holding internal discussions about expanding into crypto, a sector many had previously avoided, and France's Societe Generale last month became the world's first major bank to launch a dollar-pegged stablecoin.

(Reporting by Selena Li in Hong Kong and Elizabeth Howcroft in Paris; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)