Gerald Goh, co-founder and Asia-Pacific CEO of Sygnum / Courtesy of Sygnum
HONG KONG — There was a time when people relied heavily on cryptocurrency exchanges to handle nearly all their crypto activities. The industry was new, and few platforms — especially in traditional finance — offered similar services. Many questioned why banks were needed at all, when dealing directly with exchanges was often cheaper and less cumbersome.
But the collapse of FTX in 2022 changed that perception, said Gerald Goh, co-founder and Asia-Pacific CEO of Sygnum, the world’s first regulated digital asset bank.
“FTX made it very clear to everyone that there are significant counterparty risks when you deal with unregulated service providers,” Goh told The Korea Times in a recent interview.
“Right now, you don’t hear anyone advertising that they are unregulated. Everyone is saying they have a license somewhere. That’s a big change,” he added.
Founded in 2017 with dual headquarters in Switzerland and Singapore, Sygnum provides crypto services including trading, custody, lending, tokenization and asset management. The company serves more than 2,200 clients, primarily traditional financial institutions and high-net-worth individuals, but not retail investors.
Goh said he and his three co-founders expected the industry would eventually “cross the chasm” and become a mainstream asset class, but believed adoption would require institutional participation.
One of the first problems they aimed to solve was the difficulty of converting fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar into digital assets. Traditional banks could monitor fiat flows but had little visibility into on-chain transactions, often responding to perceived money-laundering risks by blocking transfers or closing customer accounts.
Goh said a digital asset bank that can process fiat transfers while managing wallets and verifying on-chain activity would be better positioned to assess the legitimacy of customer behavior and help grow the industry.
Today, as more regulated institutions enter the sector, transfers between banks and crypto exchanges have become smoother. But the dynamics change as transactions grow larger, according to Goh. Sygnum recently supported a $1 billion transaction for a crypto foundation, moving funds from stablecoins into money-market funds and U.S. treasuries.
Source: Korea Times News
