- Nansen has unmasked a new Ether whale.
- The whale is a leading bank in Singapore.
- The bank has made over $200M so far by holding ETH.
DBS Bank Ltd, Singapore’s largest banking corporation, is an Ether whale with hundreds of millions in ETH holdings, on-chain analytics firm Nansen reported on Thursday.
Originally known as The Development Bank of Singapore Limited, DBS operates in 19 markets across Southeast Asia. As of 31 December 2023, the bank’s assets totaled S$739 billion (Singapore dollars).
DBS Bank’s Ether Holdings
In an X (Twitter) on May 30, the Nansen team said that it had identified DBS bank as the alleged owner of an ETH whale wallet holding 173,753 Ether, worth over half a billion at press time.
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“We've identified this $650m $ETH Whale holding 173.7k ETH as DBS, the largest bank in Singapore with assets totaling S$739 billion as of 31 Dec'23. This address has made over $200m by holding ETH,” Nansen wrote.
A DBS spokesperson distanced the firm from the claims, telling Ciphera that “DBS does not have this position on our books.”
While Nansen’s revelation of DBS’s alleged Ether holdings is intriguing, the bank is not a newbie in crypto.
Besides offering digital asset custody services, DBS has branched out into cryptocurrencies through a trading exchange for security tokens and a portfolio management app for both traditional and DeFi assets.
DBS has also been synonymous with government-related Web3 projects in Singapore, including Project Guardian, which facilitated the outright purchase and sale of tokenized Singapore Government Securities (SGS), Singapore dollar (SGD), Japanese Government Bonds, and Japanese Yen. DBS, SBI, and UBS further participated in the second transaction of Project Guardian last year to complete the world’s first repo with a natively issued digital bond fully executed and settled on a public blockchain.
Other blockchain and Web3 initiatives DBS has participated in include Project Orchid for government vouchers and a cross-border e-Chinese yuan transaction test for shipments between Singapore and India.
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