110-year-old Thai bank Siam Commercial Bank enters cryptocurrency space for the first time

SCB 10X, the venture capital arm of Thailand’s Siam Commercial Bank, announced today that it will join decentralized finance (DeFi) project Band Protocol as a node validator.

As the first bank in Thailand, Siam Commercial Bank was established by royal approval in 1906. Relying on the universal banking business model, it has always been in a leading and competitive position among Thai financial institutions.

Band Protocol is a cross-chain data oracle platform that aggregates real-world data and APIs and connects them to smart contracts.

SCB 10X will work with other network nodes to verify and confirm blockchain-based financial transactions to improve security and transparency. This will help ensure the integrity of each financial transaction on the blockchain while preventing financial attacks. SCB 10X said this is the first time that an Asian financial services company has substantially participated in DeFi.

Kaweewut Temphuwapat, head of venture capital at SCB 10X, said the company has established a blockchain lab to bring together blockchain development teams within the organization to develop blockchain innovations.

“As seen in this collaboration, our participation as one of Band Protocol’s validator nodes enables us to better understand and bring the potential of a decentralized financial system to life, paving the way for other financial services in the future,” Temphuwapat said in a statement.

The move marks the first-ever foray by a long-established institution into Asia Pacific’s burgeoning cryptocurrency sector and one of the first instances of a global financial giant participating in a public DeFi network.

Meanwhile, Band Protocol’s native token, BAND, was not greatly affected by the news. Data from market tool Coingecko showed that the token was up just 0.5% on the day. However, it has returned more than 8.6% to investors over the past week and a staggering 5,288% over the past year.

At press time, BAND is trading at $14.35 with a market cap of $329 million.