DeFi industry draws in commercial banks? Siam bets with $110M fund

While serious institutional interest in crypto is perhaps becoming more of an established trend than an emerging narrative, the focus of big-money players is usually on Bitcoin (BTC). However, assets like Ether (ETH) and decentralized finance (DeFi) are beginning to pique the attention of major investors.

For Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), DeFi is a major focus point of its current digital asset drive, as Thailand’s oldest bank prepares itself for the expected financial technological disruption of decentralized finance. While other banks are still undecided or only making temporary forays into interacting with digital assets, SCB says it is keen on committing funds to explore the blockchain and DeFi space.

SCB’s DeFi focus is also coming at a time when regulators in Thailand are targeting the decentralized finance space for more stringent regulations. Indeed, regulatory attention is increasingly coming the way of the niche market space with national and intergovernmental agencies looking to craft legal policies for the DeFi market.

DeFi initially held the promise of decentralization; the disintermediation of the established gatekeepers of global finance. However, with banks and financial institutions investing in decentralized technology, the narrative appears to be shifting towards a hybrid form of DeFi known as regulated DeFi, which combines the extant norms and efficiency of traditional finance, instant settlements and cost reduction benefits associated with decentralized protocols.

DeFi ambitions

Siam Commercial Bank’s $110 million blockchain war chest started as a $50 million seed fund initiated back in February by SCB 10X, the bank’s venture arm. As reported by Cointelegraph at the time, the fund further strengthened the bank’s forward-thinking approach to the emerging developments in digital finance.

In a conversation with Cointelegraph, Mukaya ‘Tai’ Panich, chief venture and investment officer at SCB 10X, said that DeFi was a sort of revelation for the bank during its assessment of the emerging digital finance landscape.

“We were doing work on the blockchain industry and started looking into DeFi. And we were amazed by it,” Panich told Cointelegraph. According to the SCB 10X executive, the bank was quick to spot the paradigm shift of potential DeFi technology and the possible disintermediation of the traditional financial institutions.

“DeFi projects can be completely automated,” he said, noting that human involvement would be restricted to smart contract code upgrades. Panich also touched on the revolutionary nature of smart contracts and how lines of code can enable direct transactions between entities like lenders and borrowers without the need for a central counterparty.

Given the possibility of DeFi upending the legacy finance status quo, Panich says banks would do well to prepare for the imminent disruption:

“The reason we want to invest in DeFi and be part of the DeFi protocol’s ecosystem is because we want to understand and capitalize on DeFi, given its potential to meaningfully impact the financial industry.”

At $110 million, the blockchain and DeFi fund is almost half of the SCB 10X’s $220 million venture capital fund. Commenting on the size of the allocation to digital assets, Panich said that it was a reflection of the bank’s commitment to the DeFi space, adding:

“SCB 10X has invested and developed multiple collaborative relationships with the blockchain community in Asia and across the world including Ripple, BlockFi, Sygnum, Alpha Finance Lab, Anchorage, Anchor Protocol (part of Terra chain), Axelar and Ape Board, among others.”

Upending global finance

Back in April, John Whelan, head of Banco Santander’s blockchain lab in Madrid, put forward an argument for regulated DeFi. According to Whelan, private layer-two settlement networks for asset classes running on top of public blockchains will likely…