Sygnum Bank Integrates Deribit in Expansion Move

Crypto-friendly financial institution Sygnum Bank has expanded its business by integrating leading options exchange Deribit into its custody platform. This move is quite significant as it presents institutional clients with the avenue to store their assets in a regulated bank and enjoy direct access to Deribit’s liquidity. 

Institutional Clients to Benefit From Sygnum Bank nd Deribit’s Integration 

The Switzerland-based Sygnum Bank announced the milestone on Wednesday, citing that both entities will leverage Fireblocks’ “Off Exchange” service. With this service, traders can “mirror” their assets held in custody on a trading platform. This offering greatly reduces the risk of losing funds due to exchange insolvency or security breaches.

Regarding the motive behind the move, Sygnum’s chief product officer, Dominic Lohberger, said, “Counterparty risk awareness in crypto comes in cycles, and the recent major cyber-attack has triggered one of the largest waves of exchange derisking since FTX.” 

He further noted, “This is yet another reminder that separating crypto custody from exchange trading is essential for security. Sygnum Protect is an essential building block for strengthening the resilience of the crypto industry.”

Deribit sees this integration as an opportunity to provide additional security and transparency to institutional clients. These institutional investors have recently faced exposure to security vulnerabilities and hacks.

Bybit Suffers $1.4 Billion Hack

Noteworthy, Sygnum Bank made this move after Bybit suffered a hack last month. The hacker made away with $1.4 billion in Ethereum (ETH) and tried to move the stolen assets to Bitcoin (BTC). Bybit’s CEO, Ben Zhou, shared four transaction addresses linked to this movement; ‘0x4f5…8c5ef’; ‘0x1e7…ddfcc’; ‘0x3ff…4e6b2’ and ‘0xdc5…0446a.’

At the time, Zhou urged crypto bridges and exchanges to block these transactions. He noted that this would stop the hacker from converting the stolen. However, Chainflip, the fully decentralized protocol the hacker was leveraging for the transfer, stated that it could not entirely block the transactions.

Bybit Recovers Ethereum Reserve Post-Hack

On the brighter side, Bybit successfully covered the Ethereum gap caused by the hack within three days. 

It achieved this feat through loans, large deposits, and purchases, all of which amounted to 446,870 ETH. Bybit acquired over 106,498 ETH worth approximately $295 million in over-the-counter (OTC) trades.

Bybit published a Proof-of-Reserve (PoR) to show its financial portfolio’s current outlook and health status.