30s Summary
Singapore Gulf Bank, an crypto-friendly digital bank, aims to raise at least $50 million to acquire a stablecoin payments company by 2025. The bank aims to sell 10% of its stake to facilitate this, possibly through cooperation with a Middle East sovereign wealth fund, among others. The funds will be directed towards product development, network improvement and personnel recruitment. Currently, investors in the Middle East’s Web3 ecosystem predominantly hail from Bahrain, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi. Approximately 93% of transactions in the region were valued at $10,000 or above.
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Singapore Gulf Bank, a digital bank that’s friendly to cryptocurrencies, is trying to raise at least $50 million. This money will be used to buy a company that deals with stablecoin payments in 2025.
Bloomberg reported on Nov. 25 that the bank plans to sell a 10% stake in their company by early 2025 to raise the money they need for this purchase. This information came from anonymous sources with direct knowledge of the situation.
The bank is owned by the Whampoa Group. This family business, located in Singapore, was recently granted business license approval in Bahrain. We reached out to the Singapore Gulf Bank about this report, but they didn’t respond right away to confirm or deny it.
The sources also suggested that the bank is discussing selling its stake with a Middle East sovereign wealth fund and other investors. This money would be used to speed up new product development, improve the bank’s payment network and hire key workers.
The bank also hopes to buy stablecoin payments company located in either the Middle East or Europe by the first quarter of 2025.
At the moment, investors from Bahrain, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi are the most active in the Middle East’s Web3 ecosystem.
A recent report by Chainalysis showed that the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) were responsible for 7.5% of all global cryptocurrency transactions.
According to this report, an outstanding 93% of transactions were for $10,000 or more. Small retail investors contributed only a tiny 1.8% of all transaction volume in the region.
Most of the onchain activity in the region came from centralized exchanges. But, the report also mentioned high interest in decentralized platforms from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia.
The Central Bank of the UAE recently approved a custodial insurance product. This is meant to protect financial institutions and their clients from financial losses caused by hackings, internal fraud, and damage to storage infrastructure.