Traditional financial giants are also beginning to seriously enter the cryptocurrency space. On January 12th, reports indicated that Standard Chartered Bank has officially launched the development of a cryptocurrency prime brokerage business, planning to promote this project through its affiliated venture capital department. In simple terms, the services they aim to provide include digital asset custody, financing support, and trading market access—these are the essential conditions for institutional investors to enter the market.

This move is quite interesting. As is well known, regulators impose extremely strict capital requirements on unlicensed crypto assets, up to 1250%, which makes it almost impossible for traditional banks to directly engage in this business. Standard Chartered's approach is to circumvent this dilemma by establishing an independent prime brokerage structure.

In fact, Standard Chartered has already made some moves in this field, having previously invested in projects like Zodia Custody and Zodia Markets. Now, it seems their goal is clearer—aiming to become the first globally systemically important bank to launch a spot crypto trading service before 2025. What does this mean? The trend of traditional finance compromising and embracing digital assets is already inevitable.