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SINGAPORE - Institutional investors and accredited wealth clients will have more options when it comes to digital asset investments from the fourth quarter, Singapore-listed DBS Bank said. They are over-the-counter cryptocurrency options trading and structured notes, the bank said on Sept 17. DBS, which has its digital exchange DDEx, said it is the first Asian-headquartered bank to offer financial products whose value is linked to the prices of Bitcoin and Ether – the two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation. Depending on each product’s structure and cryptocurrency price movements, clients may earn yield on fiat or cryptocurrency. Eligible clients custodising Bitcoin and Ether with DBS can also hedge their positions against market volatility and potentially earn yield through various options structures. For instance, to manage Bitcoin’s volatility, a client may buy a put option. This gives the client the right to sell Bitcoin at a fixed price at a future date, even if Bitcoin prices fall below the fixed price by that future date. Mr Jacky Tai, the bank’s group head of trading and structuring for global financial markets, said professional investors are increasingly allocating digital assets to their portfolios. He noted that the new offerings are an expansion of the bank’s proposition to provide institutional-grade access to the digital asset ecosystem. The launch of these products comes against an estimated 50 per cent growth in the market capitalisation of cryptocurrencies in the first five months of 2024, DBS said. “During this same period, DDEx reported that the value of digital assets traded on the exchange nearly tripled in Singapore dollar terms as compared to the same time in 2023,” it added. The lender said the number of active trading clients on DDEx grew 36 per cent, while digital assets the bank custodised surged over 80 per cent in Singdollar terms.