{"id":11868,"date":"2022-01-20T18:34:47","date_gmt":"2022-01-20T18:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci0297c66b600025f8"},"modified":"2022-01-20T18:34:47","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T18:34:47","slug":"philippine-bank-to-offer-bitcoin-trading-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/markets\/philippine-bank-to-offer-bitcoin-trading-report","title":{"rendered":"Philippine Bank to Offer Bitcoin Trading: Report"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Union Bank of the Philippines is planning to offer bitcoin and cryptocurrency trading and custody services to its customers, according to a Bloomberg<\/em><\/a> report.<\/p>\n

The move seeks to capitalize on the rampant adoption of such assets in the Asian nation, the report said, as the average investor in the country is expected to hold between 3% and 5% of their personal assets in cryptocurrency in five years. Currently, these figures are approximately 1% to 2%, Cathay Casas, head of the bank\u2019s blockchain and application programming interface group, told Bloomberg<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Casas said the new offerings represent \u201ca way to future-proof our banking business,\u201d per the report. \u201cWe are making efforts to educate our clients also via social media, making sure that they are safe,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

The Union Bank of the Philippines<\/a> offers a wide range of financial services to corporate and consumer clients, including investment management, trust banking, insurance brokerage, currency brokerage, and private banking services. It was incorporated in 1968 and has over 3,000 employees.<\/p>\n

The Union Bank of the Philippines\u2019 custodial services for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies will also be capable of encompassing tokenized bonds, Casas told Bloomberg<\/em>.<\/p>\n

According to the report, the bank became the first Philippine bank to launch its own stablecoin in 2019 to provide \u201crural banks in its network easier access to remittances and payments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the bank\u2019s positive stance towards Bitcoin, the country\u2019s central bank Governor Benjamin Diokno has, according to the report, cautioned that cryptocurrencies could \u201cpose a danger to the financial system<\/a>\u201d as they are \u201cvery vulnerable<\/a>\u201d to illicit activities.<\/p>\n

Any medium of exchange can be leveraged by criminals, and blaming the tool rather than the person using it is a fallacious argument. For instance, one of the largest cases of money laundering schemes uncovered to date involved U.S. dollars and the international bank HSBC<\/a>. In contrast, bitcoin\u2019s usage for illicit activities has been in decline<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Union Bank of the Philippines reportedly plans to offer trading and custody of bitcoin and cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2572,"featured_media":7729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[697,302,93,1394,777,468,2613],"class_list":{"0":"post-11868","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-banks","9":"tag-custody","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-philippines","12":"tag-report","13":"tag-trading","14":"tag-unionbank"},"author_data":{"id":2572,"name":"Namcios","nicename":"namcios","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/pfp-96x96.png"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/bitcoin-price-surge-may-not-be-trade-war-but-whales.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2572"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}