Jewel Bank has received approval from the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA) for a combined full bank license and digital asset business license.
Jewel Bank is Bermuda's first new bank in more than twenty years and the country’s first digital asset bank.
As a fully licensed Bermudian bank, Jewel Bank will service digital asset firms around the world in any non-sanctioned jurisdiction, as well as the US.
Jewel's services address the banking, payments, and settlement needs of many of the world's largest global digital asset firms and exchanges.
Jewel Bank's primary focus will be to serve the needs of non-US domiciled or licensed firms, providing digital asset banking, payments, fiat on/off ramps, custody, crypto-collateralised lending, stablecoin issuance and real-time settlement services to large digital asset firms.
The bank also plans to offer domestic retail banking services in Bermuda and help accelerate Bermuda's digital transformation.
Jewel Bank will issue a USD stablecoin, and later plans on issuing its own stablecoins and also issuing stablecoins "as-a-service" for other banks and non-bank financial institutions.
Jewel Bank's first use case for its USD stablecoin is for Jewel Settle — its own real-time settlement network that enables select Jewel clients to settle with their digital asset trading counterparts in USD, in real time.
Chancellor Barnett, founder, chairman and chief strategy officer at Jewel Bank, says: "Institutional banking infrastructure has been the critical missing link for high growth digital asset exchanges and institutions outside of the US, bringing much-needed liquidity, reliability, and scale to this rapidly growing global space and its demand for fiat ramps and stablecoin payments.”
He adds: “Jewel Bank will serve as the bridge between the traditional fiat banking system and new digital asset rails in order to serve the high-volume payments and settlement needs of our large global clients, including crypto exchanges, with both traditional and stablecoin-based payments solutions."
David Burt, Bermuda’s premier, comments: "The granting of a full banking license by the BMA to Jewel Bank is a tremendous achievement both for Jewel Bank and Bermuda. I am incredibly honoured that Jewel Bank chose Bermuda as their home and am pleased to finally be able to say that Bermuda has a complete banking solution for the digital asset industry.”
