According to a Bloomberg report citing a person familiar with the matter, wealthy clients of Swiss bank UBS can now take exposure to three crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) through the lender’s Hong Kong platform.
The securities regulator in Hong Kong, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), has authorised the three cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs): Samsung Bitcoin Futures Active, CSOP Bitcoin Futures, and CSOP Ether Futures ETFs. The combined assets of the three products are estimated to be worth $72 million.
Notably, the announcement was made the day after HSBC, one of the biggest banks in the world, announced that it would launch a service for institutional clients to custody digital assets.
Over the last few days, Hong Kong has made progress towards permitting retail investors to purchase primary dealing of tokenization and spot cryptocurrency Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). The action seems to be a continuation of Hong Kong’s recently intensified goals to develop into a hub for virtual assets. It began accepting applications for licences to operate cryptocurrency trading platforms in June of last year, and in August it granted the first set of licences, enabling exchanges to provide services to individual consumers.
In a recent announcement, UBS was listed as one of six commercial banks collaborating on a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot project with the Swiss National Bank (SNB).
When Credit Suisse failed earlier this year in March, UBS intervened to save the company. Not too long after, bitcoin surpassed $28,000.