HSBC, one of the largest bank-holding corporations in the world, has filed for a variety of new trademarks for digital assets including cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and metaverse products. The news comes at a time when confidence in the crypto market has been shattered, with millions losing their net worth and employment following several devastating collapses in the market caused by ineptitude, fraud, and deception.

The filing

The filing was made official on December 15th and contains a comprehensive list of products related to the blockchain industry and specifically about NFTs within the metaverse. It appears that HSBC is positioning itself for early adoption within the metaverse.

Although many have stated how much they detest the metaverse, HSBC appears to see a certain value in it that they are planning to support. The filing includes multiple forms of media such as video and music content that must be authenticated by NFTs, suggesting that they will begin to explore different avenues of web3 business models. 

Financial institutions in crypto

While we can only speculate what these trademarks for NFTs will be used for, it is not the first time that a major financial institution has entered the world of cryptocurrency. Earlier in the summer, Coinbase made an official partnership with BlackRock to provide services to their affiliates to increase bitcoin exposure for large corporations.

These services also include their own private keys so that liquidity stored on the blockchain through Coinbase and BlackRock is both made safe and secure for institutional investors who might be interested in the asset without wanting the burden of keeping a private key secure. 

Are NFTs changing?

The decision to include NFTs also goes further than just simple metaverse products, too. NFTs have been heavily criticized since their rise to popularity for being useless assets with no real value. 

While this is true for the majority of NFT collections available online, there is still a case to be made that many utilities involving NFTs have yet to be fully developed when pertaining to ownership of digital goods; and it can be speculated that HSBC is seeking to open up holding services for NFTs within virtual worlds under the assumption that the metaverse eventually becomes populated.

Web3 banking?

Despite all of this, the concept of web3 banking still makes little sense when looking at the bigger picture of blockchain technology and self-custody. One of the primary purposes of bitcoin and other blockchain networks is to provide users with true ownership of their financial wealth.

By placing trust into a bank of any sort to protect these digital assets, the original intent of cryptocurrency becomes muddled with third parties continuing to offer their financial services. 

While this criticism may go beyond the scope of NFT trademarks being filed by HSBC, it is still something to consider when wondering why a bank would seek exposure to blockchain products within the metaverse. Although banking may not serve an obvious purpose in the world of blockchain, HSBC must be eyeing a lot of different possibilities as we all venture into this new phase of the internet together.