HSBC Looking to 'Trad Cautiously Into Cryptocurrencies'

So far, banks have had a hot and cold relationship with cryptocurrencies. Although a majority of them, seems to hate them, there are a few banks that have announced a gradual turnaround.

In an interview to news portal, Forbes, Global Head of Digital at HSBC, Josh Bottomley said, the bank is "cautiously looking" at cryptocurrency use cases. He said, ":There's a use case when you have a token or currency that's actually useful for a particular purpose, and it serves that need."

Interestingly, he doesn't seem to think much of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ethereum. He said, "But that is very different to if it's pure speculation. Right now we're not interested in that at all."

Intrigued by this statement, we checked out the UBIN project website which is a collaboration between various international banks and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). The website said, "MAS announced on 16 November 2016 that it is partnering R3, a Distributed Ledger Technology company, and a consortium of financial institutions on a proof-of-concept project to conduct inter-bank payments using Blockchain technology. The consortium includes Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, DBS Bank, The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, J.P. Morgan, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, OCBC Bank, R3, Singapore Exchange, UOB Bank, and BCS Information Systems as a technology provider to the project."

A source familiar with the developments told Crypto-News India, "It's not that we are not interested in blockchain technology in India. However, some banks who tried leveraging the technology in the field of trade-finance have not received favourable response. Most banks who have tried experimenting with the technology are in the Proof-of-Concept (POC) stage, but not many have been able to reach the production stage."

The source added, the MAS, in collaboration with the bank wants to understand use-cases of cryptocurrencies in various fields such as how it affects the challenges-cross border payments, domestic payments, security settlement and so on.

Asked if the bank would be interested in collaborating with the central bank, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the source said, "We will definitely be open to trying something like this in India. However, if the public sector banks get in on it, we will not be as interested."

However, given that the Reserve Bank of India has not shown any interest in this field, and directed banks to stop working with cryptocurrency exchanges, this idea at the moment, seems far-fetched.