blockworks.co
Switzerland’s SEBA Bank, a fintech bank which recently secured the first license from Swiss Authorities to custody digital assets for Swiss-based funds and institutional investors, announced today the launch of SEBA Earn, its yield generating product for custodied crypto.
“It is clear that as institutional interest in digital assets accelerates, investors have a broader appetite for crypto assets, with a particular interest in earning services like staking, DeFi and centralized crypto borrowing and lending,” Guido Buehler, CEO of SEBA Bank, said in a release.
The bank will allow its institutional clients to lend out their bitcoins — a relatively low-risk way of generating liquidity for bitcoins on the corporate balance sheet.
SEBA says that at launch its product will first support yield generating via staking, with support for more earning services coming down the road. As Proof-of-Stake protocols become more and more common alongside institutional adoption of digital assets, SEBA says it is meeting a market demand from corporations that now hold crypto on their balance sheets and are after “internet bonds”.
“SEBA Bank has seen interest from across our client segments, including institutions and professional clients. Individual clients have shown tremendous appetite to engage in staking via our fully regulated and supervised banking entity,” Buehler said in an email.
“Institutions, ranging from our banking clients, funds, crypto platforms, and family offices have shown interest and are keen to engage with SEBA Bank in this new offering.”
In an email to Blockworks, Buehler did note that Ethereum 2.0 staking isn’t currently supported, and new coins would be added according to client demand. The bank also said that it plans to provide lending services in the near future.
SEBA joins a growing list of digital asset focused banks that have begun institutional outreach. In the US, Anchorage has positioned itself as the “crypto bank” for financial institutions such as Oasis Pro Markets, inking deals to become their infrastructure enabler, or BankProv to provide dollar loans against digital assets.