Singapore Regulator’s Clampdown on Crypto

The Singapore crypto scene is one of the main attractions in the unregulated digital currency landscape due to the country’s friendliness towards the new financial revolution.

Unfortunately, the country’s regulator’s tightening on digital finance in June contradicts Tharman Shanmugaratnam, a senior minister in the Cabinet who saw a lot of positives in digital assets in the sovereign island country and this has sent shockwaves across the markets. On Thursday, June 23, the central bank and financial regulator of one of Asia’s booming economies pledged to be unrelentingly hard and brutal on any transgression from major stakeholders in the digital currency industry.

These comments were made by Sopnendu Mohanty, the Chief Fintech Officer of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) who explained in an interview with the Financial Times (FT) which was highly monitored by MoniTalks.

The Fintech Officer also criticized market participants who believe the country is losing its status as a friendly state for alternative finance. He responded that his country should not be friendly with decentralized finance because it can only deal with actors in a real economy and not some “unreal economy”.

To many firms in the space, this is a complete turnaround from what cabinet minister Shanmugaratnam said in October 2021. At the peak of the markets during the first month of the last quarter of 2021, he pointed out that digital tokens may have a role in future finance that goes beyond illicit finance and pure speculation.

He added that the country was laying the foundation for becoming a crypto-technology hub which will make it easy for tokenization, trading, and custody services to be provided by companies.

With that said, Chief Fintech Officer, Sopnendu Mohanty believes the current financial crisis can be attributed to the world being lost in private currency.

As a result, the Asian state has enacted a painfully slow due diligence process that grants licenses to businesses associated with the digital currency market.

Singapore crypto became a mainstay in the space because firms enjoyed low taxes.

Unfortunately, the view in which the minister sees a place for crypto in the Asia hub has been replaced by regulations that aim to pave the way for the introduction of central bank digital currency (CBDC) which could be launched in the next three years.