Swiss State Bank Post Financial ETH
PostFinance, a crypto-friendly retail bank wholly owned by the Swiss government, is offering Ether shares to its 2.7 million customers, which is about a quarter of the Swiss population.
In a blog post on January 16, the bank said the service will offer investments using Ether (ETH) for a limited period of at least twelve weeks, giving it the opportunity to sell its certified share awards.
It comes as other traditional banks enter the crypto space. In December, Anchorage became the first U.S. federally chartered bank to support staking of digital liquid ether.
A minimum of 32 Ether is required to share a total value of $106,000. PostFinance says it allows people to trade stocks using 0.1 Ether, which is worth roughly $331.
Source: Post Finance
Alexander Toma, Head of Digital Assets at Post Finance, said in a statement that the bank's stock service will be natively based on the Ethereum blockchain.
The staking service is fully integrated with Post Finance's existing services, he said.
“This means customers can see their share rewards directly in their asset statements and with their other crypto assets,” added Toma.
In a question and answer session about PostFinance's staking service, it said that only Ether is currently offered, but that the bank “plans to offer other coins in due course”.
According to Beacon Chain, the amount of Ether stored is growing every year and is currently more than 33 million shares, compared to 682,00 on December 1, 2020.
Since the Beacon Chain was launched in December 2020, the amount of Ether distributed has grown every year. Source: Beacon China
Liquid staking protocol Lido Finance has the largest market share for Ether at 28%, while crypto exchange Coinbase has the second largest share at 9.5%, according to a Dune Analytics dashboard.
Founded in 1906, PostFinance is the financial services division of Swiss Post, Switzerland's national postal service.
According to non-profit organization Swiss Sustainable Finance (SSF), the bank has about $136 billion (124 billion Swiss francs) under management.
Related: Regulatory transparency key for banks entering crypto, says industry exec
This isn't PostFinance's first foray into crypto. In April 2023, the bank announced plans to offer crypto trading and custody services in partnership with digital asset banking group Sygnum. The service went live last February.
Earlier, in 2022, he started building a crypto holding platform. A year ago, it started offering digital collections linked to physical stamps.
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