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Multinational bank Standard Chartered is reportedly building a spot trading desk for buying and selling Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), potentially becoming one of the first global banks to enter spot cryptocurrency trading.

The planned London-based desk will start operations soon as part of the bank’s FX trading, Bloomberg reported on June 21, citing sources familiar with the matter.

“We have been working closely with our regulators to support demand from our institutional clients to trade Bitcoin and Ethereum, in line with our strategy to support clients across the wider digital asset ecosystem, from access and custody to tokenization and interoperability,” Standard Chartered said in an emailed statement, according to Bloomberg.

While the United Kingdom-headquartered bank would become a pioneer among global bankers entering the spot crypto trading scene, others have already been trading crypto derivatives for years. Wall Street heavyweight Goldman Sachs previously worked with Michael Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital on an over-the-counter (OTC) crypto-related trade.

In 2021, the investment bank relaunched its crypto trading desk for Bitcoin futures as part of its broader push into digital assets.

Like Standard Chartered, Goldman Sachs also reported increasing demand among its clientele for institutional involvement in the crypto market.

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While the latest developments could be another first for Standard Chartered, it is not the firm’s initial foray into the blockchain space. In November last year, SC Ventures, the fintech investment arm of the British bank, announced a joint investment venture with Japanese financial firm SBI Holdings in the United Arab Emirates, which will make investments in decentralized finance, tokenization, and the metaverse, among other focus areas. Less than a week later, the subsidiary launched a tokenization platform.

More recently, the bank’s Hong Kong wing, SCBHK, ran a proof-of-concept pilot that tokenized carbon credits within the Hong Kong Monetary Authority Fintech Supervisory Sandbox with Mastercard, with the parties completing the first live test in May.

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