A 170-year-old bank is about to get a lot more comfortable with Bitcoin. Standard Chartered announced on December 12 that it is expanding its partnership with Coinbase to build a full suite of crypto services for institutional investors who have been long waiting for the same.
The deal puts Standard Chartered and Coinbase in a position to offer everything from basic trading to more complex services like prime brokerage, custody, staking, and crypto-backed lending. It shows that big money—pension funds, hedge funds, and asset managers—wants a trusted name handling their Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency trades.
Margaret Harwood-Jones, who runs financing and securities services at Standard Chartered, said the bank wants to help clients navigate digital asset markets safely. The partnership merges Standard Chartered’s proficiency in cross-border banking with Coinbase’s cryptocurrency platform, aiming to establish a comprehensive solution for institutions.
Singapore Shows the Way
This is not the first deal for these two. Standard Chartered already handles banking for Coinbase in Singapore, processing real-time transfers in Singapore dollars for customers there. That arrangement has worked well enough that both sides decided to expand it.
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Standard Chartered has also been exploring the cryptocurrency market in other regions. Last year, Crypto.com tapped the bank to roll out retail banking features in over 90 countries, letting users move U.S. dollars, euros, and UAE dirhams in and out of the platform.
Coinbase, meanwhile, keeps adding products aimed at big investors. Next week, the exchange plans to announce new offerings that could include prediction markets and tokenised stocks—essentially letting people trade shares on blockchain.
Traditional Finance Warms to Crypto
Coinbase has spent years trying to convince traditional banks that it is a serious player, and lately that pitch seems to be working. JPMorgan recently brought its JPM Coin token to Base, Coinbase’s blockchain network. This development is being seen as a major endorsement from one of America’s financial institutions.
The regulatory picture is also shifting. On Friday, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a U.S. federal agency that supervises national banks and federal trust companies, made a major decision. It gave conditional approval to five crypto companies—BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, Paxos, Circle, and Ripple—to operate as national trust banks. This is a big step towards bringing crypto into the mainstream banking system.
The new news regarding Standard Chartered shows how far cryptocurrency has come. Key banks now view digital assets as something worth building infrastructure for, not something to avoid.
