Singapore will be “cruelly and relentlessly hard” in tackling violations in the cryptocurrency industry. This was stated by Sopnendu Mohanty, director of the fintech division at MAS, in an interview with Financial Times.
He questioned the value of most cryptocurrencies and said that within three years there would be an alternative in the form of government-backed central bank digital currencies.
“Many in the crypto industry consider us unfriendly. My answer: friendly toward what? The real economy or some unreal economy?”
According to him, MAS does not intend to turn a blind eye to dishonest market participants. He stressed that if such players are found, the regulator’s response will be “cruel and relentlessly hard.”
Mohanty noted that Singapore deploys a “painfully slow” and “extremely draconian” process of due diligence for licensing crypto businesses.
According to the regulator, in 2021 around 100 companies either отозвали their license applications or were refused.
Approval to operate is held by the brokerage arm of Singapore’s largest bank DBS Bank and the Australian cryptocurrency exchange Independent Reserve. In March 2022, the regulator also granted a license to provide crypto- and other digital-asset-related services to Paxos.
At the same time, MAS is not opposed to digital assets overall. He said that a consortium of companies led by Mojaloop and Temasek is aiming to embed a digital currency into the cross-border payments system.
“We are tirelessly building the infrastructure of the economy of the future, which may be based on digital assets,” he said.
In May 2022, MAS initiated Project Guardian. Under this framework, the regulator, together with JPMorgan, Marketnote and DBS, aims to study the capabilities of DeFi protocols.
In February, DBS Bank said it planned to open by the end of 2022 an investor-facing platform for trading digital assets.
In January 2022, MAS advised industry players not to advertise their services to the general public to avoid the risk of speculation.
Read ForkLog’s Bitcoin news on our Telegram — cryptocurrency news, prices and analytics.