Traditional financial giants are starting to make heavy bets in the crypto space. Standard Chartered Bank recently made a big move—planning to set up a crypto asset prime brokerage business within its dedicated venture capital arm, SC Ventures, directly participating in the competition for institutional-grade crypto trading.

There is a strategic calculation behind this decision. According to Basel III rules, "permissionless crypto assets" like Bitcoin and Ethereum are assigned a risk weight requirement of 1250%. In other words, conducting this type of business directly within the investment banking system is too costly. By operating through an independent venture capital division, Standard Chartered can more flexibly circumvent these stringent capital requirements—this is a clever architectural design.

It is worth noting that Standard Chartered has been making rapid progress in the digital asset field over the past two years, already supporting crypto trading platforms like Zodia. This move into prime brokerage indicates that traditional financial institutions are seriously considering the crypto market as a business line worth deep cultivation. Although still in early discussion stages, the signals are very clear.