Singapore’s Diginex to Offer USD Loans With Bitcoin As Collateral, Asian Market Stays Hot

Bitcoin (BTC) has had a phenomenal ride over the last year since March 2020 surging 10x until now. Also, it has been a great start to the year 2021, as despite the recent correction, BTC is still 51% up year-to-date. Also, the Bitcoin/Equity correlation has been on the rise over the last year.

As it turns out, more investment firms are warming up to Bitcoin and are eager to offer dollar loans with Bitcoin as collateral. As per the latest report from SCMP, Singapore-based Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange Diginex is willing to offer crypto lending and borrowing services to its clients starting March 2020.

Diginex chief executive Richard Byworth said that this service will help to capture institutional demand. Besides, Byworth notes that this is the right time considering a bearish outlook on the USD. He told SCMP:

“An investor trading crypto-derivatives on our platform can borrow US dollar from us against bitcoin, which is put into our custody facility as collateral. If one sees the dollar value weakening against the bitcoin, that could be a better way to spend the fiat currency today than at a future date.”

The fears of inflation and currency devaluation have pushed big corporates and financial institutions, closer to Bitcoin (BTC). While the Dollar Index has dropped 7.4% over the last year, Bitcoin’s (BTC) rally has been extremely phenomenal.

Diginex said that it will let traders borrow Bitcoin for the short-selling purpose as part of the hedging strategy. The lender on Diginex will receive a fee for the same. Such traders are most likely to start by the next month said Diginex chief executive.

The Asian market remains hot at the moment with respect to the interest in crypto-based financial products. But Diginex is not the first to offer USD-loans with Bitcoin as collateral. Last year, U.S-based investment giant Fidelity announced a similar offering in partnership with BlockFi.

Asia’s Crypto Landscape Is Hot

Messari Crypto Researcher, Mira Christanto recently published a report “Asia’s Crypto Landscape” highlighting the current developments in Asia’s crypto market. The report goes to mention that the Asian market is pretty hot when it comes to crypto developments.

Christanto wrote that six out of the top-ten crypto unicorns are based out of Asia. To our surprise, 94% of trading volume in BTC futures, and 98% volume for ETH-based futures come from Asia. In her report, Christanto states:

“Leading crypto countries, such as China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore, have deep pools of liquidity, while other countries have a great potential to scale. The nature of traditional finance has played a key role in the adoption of crypto: capital controls pushed investors towards cryptocurrencies in China and South Korea while low-yields pushed adoption in Japan”.

Apart from some big players, countries like Vietnam and Malaysia are making key contributions to global FinTech developments.