HSBC has no plans to offer crypto services, says bank’s CEO

A number of big names in international finance, such as Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, and UBS, have recently added crypto services due to customer demand. However, it appears that HSBC is bucking the trend as it announced that it has no plans of offering such services to its clientele.

HSBC CEO Noel Quinn told Reuters that his bank has no plans of putting up a crypto desk or offering crypto services to its clients. He cited the volatility of cryptos as the reason why Europe’s largest bank won’t be following the footsteps of its rivals.

“Given the volatility, we are not into Bitcoin as an asset class, if our clients want to be there then of course they are, but we are not promoting it as an asset class within our wealth management business,” Quinn said.

Even though they are less volatile than Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), HSBC is not planning on launching services that involve stablecoins either. “For similar reasons, we’re not rushing into stablecoins,” Quinn added. Stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) minimizes volatility to their price by pegging their value to more stable assets such as the U.S. dollar.

"Then you get to stablecoins which do have some reserve backing behind them to address the stored value concerns, but it depends on who the sponsoring organization is plus the structure and accessibility of the reserve," he added.

However, HSBC is not averse to dealing with central bank digital currencies. CBDCs are digital currencies issued by a country’s central bank, which essentially makes them digital versions of the official currency of the issuing country.

“CBDCs can facilitate international transactions in e-wallets more simply, they take out friction costs and they are likely to operate in a transparent manner and have strong attributes of stored value,” Quinn explained.

A number of countries are already in various stages of development for their CBDC project with China already testing out its digital yuan in key cities. HBDC has already reached out to several governments including China, Britain, the UAE, and Canada to inquire about their CBDC initiatives.

TokenPost | [email protected]