TL;DR:
- Standard Chartered, through SC Ventures, became the first external shareholder of GSR, the crypto market maker founded in 2013.
- The investment is part of an alliance aimed at connecting traditional finance with crypto assets and expanding access to tokenization.
- GSR invested last month in Libeara, a tokenization platform backed by SC Ventures.
Standard Chartered announced that its investment and fintech arm, SC Ventures, became the first external shareholder of GSR, the crypto market maker founded in Singapore in 2013. The transaction was confirmed, but no details were disclosed regarding the size of the stake acquired.
GSR operates as a liquidity provider, advisory services firm, and asset manager for both crypto-native companies and financial institutions of various sizes around the world. According to the company’s statement, the addition of SC Ventures as a strategic partner represents “the first external shareholder in GSR’s history since its founding“. GSR CEO Xin Song noted that the alliance will combine capital markets expertise with banking infrastructure, and pointed to tokenization as the central starting point of the collaboration.
This marks an important milestone for GSR as our first external strategic shareholder since our founding.
We look forward to building alongside SC Ventures and Standard Chartered as long-term partners in shaping this next phase of digital asset adoption. https://t.co/aU7sqPMeZH
— Xin Song (@xinsong86) May 4, 2026
SC Ventures CEO Alex Manson stated that the investment in GSR “is aligned with its goal of building institutional ecosystems capable of sustaining greater liquidity and more resilient market activity”.
Tokenization, the Key Element in the SC Ventures and GSR Alliance
The agreement was in part facilitated by the close ties between both organizations. In April 2026, GSR invested in Libeara, an asset tokenization platform backed by SC Ventures whose goal is to enable different financial institutions to issue tokenized assets. That transaction preceded SC Ventures’ entry into GSR’s capital and confirms that the relationship between the two firms goes well beyond a simple equity stake.
Standard Chartered is following the same path as other major banks. JPMorgan Chase developed its own blockchain division, BNY Mellon offers cryptocurrency custody services, and Standard Chartered itself had previously invested in Ripple, the crypto infrastructure company. The growing popularity of tokenized assets has been driving institutional adoption of blockchain technology as an alternative to traditional financial infrastructure.
