The managing director of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s Blockchain and Digital Assets division said that cryptocurrency had entered the mainstream.
Since allowing customers to purchase and trade digital assets last year, Australia’s biggest bank by total assets has seen a considerable increase in crypto activity on its app.
On the opening day of Blockchain Australia’s five-day Blockchain Week conference in Sydney, Sophie Gilder, Commbank’s managing director of Blockchain and Digital Assets, said the bank’s app had received “overwhelmingly favourable” replies.
The app’s welcome follows Commbank’s secondary market trading of blockchain bonds in 2019 and represents a major step forward in the country’s embrace of the underlying technology.
Gilder and many other executives from Macquarie, Visa, and JPMorgan said that their business choices regarding cryptocurrency goods are mostly driven by customers in a “rapidly moving” market.
“Over the previous two years, almost 900,000 of our clients have moved funds to cryptocurrency exchanges,” Gilder said. “CBA has a banking link with one in every three Australians. As a result, we see this activity occurring; our clients are already there in this arena. According to our statistics, you might say it’s already widespread.”
Gilder also said that although response has been largely good, the bank’s app has received the most complaints from clients who have not yet been granted access to the test.
CBA stated in November that it will start a crypto trial programme, allowing chosen clients to purchase, trade, and store digital assets directly via the bank’s CommBank app. Following its December debut, the bank became Australia’s first of its type to provide crypto goods directly to its clients.
Gemini, a cryptocurrency exchange, and Chainalysis, a blockchain research organisation, were called in to help with the service’s design and custody. At the moment, ten crypto assets are available for purchase, including bitcoin and ether.
Chainalysis’s package of tools enables the bank to “analyse precisely what is occurring on the blockchain,” Gilder said, adding that “five years ago, you would not have had that degree of confidence.”
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