Capital Union, a Bahamas-based bank that reportedly holds a portion of reserves by the Tether (USDT) stablecoin issuer, has been itself actively involved in the cryptocurrency industry.
The banking institution has rolled out crypto trading and custody services to its professional clients as part of the bank’s trading desk, a spokesperson for Capital Union told Cointelegraph on May 31.
“We work with a few selected trading venues and liquidity providers and a handful of custodians and technology providers, which allows us to support a large variety of digital assets as part of our trading and custody services,” the firm’s representative said.
Capital Union’s crypto-related services still represent a “fairly small portion” of its business, which is mainly focused on providing traditional wealth management and investment services, the representative noted.
The spokesperson did not elaborate either on what cryptocurrencies exactly are supported on the Capital Union’s platform or when they were launched, stating:
“We do not have a directional view on crypto markets or on any specific coins but as a forward looking financial institution have chosen to enable our professional clients to trade in this new asset class should they desire to do so.”
According to the representative, Capital Union has also been actively working on developing “transactional blockchain related capabilities” as the bank expects this to be an area of “significant disruption for the financial industry.”
Capital Union’s latest crypto-related remarks follow a May 30 report claiming that Tether held some of its reserves at the Capital Union bank. The company’s representative declined to confirm or deny the bank’s involvement in Tether’s operations to Cointelegraph, citing confidentiality reasons. The only publicly available information from the bank is included in Capital Union’s annual reports, the person added.
Related: Stablecoin supplies and cash reserves in question amid crypto exodus
Founded in 2013, Capital Union managed $1 billion of assets by the end of 2020. The bank partnered with Chainalysis in April 2022 in order to ensure the safe and compliant rollout of its crypto solutions like trading and custody. According to the bank’s spokesperson, the Bahamas was one of the first nations to adopt a regulatory framework known as the DARE Act in 2020.
“As a locally regulated bank, this allows us to offer crypto-related services to our clients, which are financial institutions, financial intermediaries and professional investors,” Capital Union’s representative said.