Switzerland’s Largest Bank UBS Mulls Over Cryptocurrency Services

Swiss investment bank UBS Group is reportedly exploring offering cryptocurrency services to its wealthy clients. UBS joins a growing list of major investment banks that are either already offering or planning to offer crypto investments to their clients, including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup.

• UBS Group AG is exploring “offering crypto investments to rich clients,” Bloomberg reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. According to the publication, the company is in the early stages of planning its offerings.

• Several crypto investment options are being considered but any offering would be a small portion of the clients’ total wealth because of the volatility, one of the people told the news outlet. Some of the options being explored include investing through third-party investment vehicles.

• UBS said in a statement: “We are monitoring the developments in the field of digital assets closely. Importantly, we are most interested in the technology which underpins digital assets, namely the distributed ledger technology.”

• Based on total assets in 2020, UBS Group is the largest bank in Switzerland with more than $1.13 trillion in total assets, followed by Credit Suisse with $992 billion.

• Several major investment banks have already said that they will be offering wealthy clients some crypto-related investments, including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Citigroup and JPMorgan are also reportedly considering offering some crypto services.

• In January, UBS published a report advising whether their clients should buy bitcoin. While acknowledging that the price of the cryptocurrency may increase, the bank is skeptical about any essential real-world use cases. Meanwhile, Paul Donovan, Chief Economist of UBS Global Wealth Management, recently said that “bitcoin is denied to those minority groups who have reduced online access.”

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