Ethereum lands DBS tokenized notes as $1000 units rewrite private banking

Asia’s financial services giant DBS has launched its tokenized structured notes on the Ethereum network for accredited and institutional investors, marking a public-chain expansion of the bank’s digital asset program.

The notes are issued on Ethereum and sold in smaller ($1,000) units than conventional private-bank products, targeting distribution to eligible clients via licensed platforms.

The move follows DBS’s rollout of crypto-linked options and structured notes for eligible clients in late 2024, which the bank said would begin in the fourth quarter of that year.

Those offerings provided exposure to Bitcoin and Ethereum through OTC options and structured notes, expanding the toolset for risk management and yield within institutional mandates. Today’s tokenized issuance takes that product line on-chain and shifts issuance and secondary logistics to Ethereum’s settlement rails.

DBS has run parallel experiments on permissioned infrastructure inside its transaction banking stack. In October 2024, the bank unveiled DBS Token Services, an EVM-compatible permissioned blockchain integrated with its core payments engine to enable treasury tokens, conditional payments, and programmable rewards for institutions.

That suite was designed for real-time settlement and interoperability with existing payment networks. By placing structured notes directly on public Ethereum, DBS is extending issuance beyond a closed ledger while retaining an EVM toolset already used in its enterprise pilots.

The Singapore regulator has pushed industry pilots that map out standards and controls for tokenized markets. The Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Project Guardian has coordinated pilots across fixed income, FX, and asset and wealth management with 24 financial institutions, including DBS, to develop issuance protocols and market practices.

As the MAS reported, the workstreams are drafting fixed-income data standards and documentation guidance that align with tokenized bond and…