Last week South Korean Shinhan Bank announced that it had signed an agreement with Cross Angle, the operator of cryptocurrency rating platform Xangle. Shinhan Capital is also investing in the startup.
Xangle provides audit reports and analysis of blockchain projects, including the curation of on-chain data. It offers a Credibility Rating which some cryptocurrency exchanges use to vet whether a crypto should be listed. Shinhan Bank intends to use Xangle’s capabilities to develop new services that combine financial and digital asset data, as well as to discover new innovative blockchain companies.
Shinhan is one of the most active Korean banks in the digital asset and blockchain sectors. The bank part-owns Korea Digital Asset Trust (KDAC), a digital asset custody firm. In May last year, KDAC signed its first clients.
The bank was recently involved in a stablecoin trial in partnership with South Africa’s Standard Bank. The idea was to use stablecoins for low-cost and traceable cross-border remittance payments with fast transaction speeds using the Hedera Hashgraph distributed ledger network. Shinhan is a member of Hedera’s Global Governing Council.
The Korean bank is also a governance council member of Klaytn, the Korean public blockchain network.
Shinhan has been involved in several other blockchain partnerships. In March last year, it completed a demo platform for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) with LG CNS. This project was completed independently from Korea’s central bank, and was not shortlisted by the central bank as a solution. Shinhan anticipates that a future CBDC would need to use banks like itself as intermediaries.
