Hex Trust, which is considered to be among Hong Kong’s prominent custodians for digital assets, declared a collaboration with the Union Bank of Philippines to spread its custodian facilities across the country. The organization has declared that the partnership will commence among the employees of Union Bank and Hex Trust before the completely commercialized custody service of the digital assets for the customers of the bank. Union Bank stated that the project would be supervised by Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (the central bank of the country).

Historically, the Philippines had substantial attention for digital assets as there is a huge spread of overseas employees who transact nearly $2 billion every month back to it. The issue at the back is that all that money is transferred through the unlicensed and unregulated crypto exchanges. Similarly, there is a requirement for a regulated and insured place to stock the digital goods for providing DeFi and digital assets as a substitute for evolving crumbling capital markets of the country. Thus the country is eager to step into this field.

A rapid upsurge in South Asia regarding both the institutional as well as the retail interest in the digital assets has increased their adoption at the banking level. This collaboration indicates the capability of Hex Trust to deliver such services to famous bank-level custodian platforms across the region. Hex Trust’s CEO ‘Alessio Quaglini’ mentioned that a huge retail demand is being observed by them, which is drawing the attention of the newly entering institutions in the market. He also disclosed that South Asia’s regulatory control is far lesser than that of the U.S. or Europe, which makes it convenient for fintech and digital assets firms to establish their workshops.

Mobile gaming has constantly been prominent within the Southeast Asian region because the game consoles are only reserved for wealthy people, so the usage of average mobile phones is frequent due to their good performance than the cheapest notebooks used by the people. Quaglini further added that another reason for the institute-level infrastructure of cryptocurrency is that blockchain gaming is expanding all over the region, just as Axie Infinity (the initial crypto as well as NFT game which crossed $1B in deals). Neither Union Bank nor Hex Trust has declared any timeline for they are expected to begin these services.