Circle is latest recipient of Major Payment Institution license in Singapore

June 7, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Circle

The stablecoin issuer is the second crypto company to receive Singapore’s MPI license this month, following Crypto.com.

Circle’s Singapore affiliate, Circle Internet Singapore, has received a Major Payment Institution (MPI) license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Circle Singapore received in-principle MPI approval from MAS in November and opened its office in the city-state in May.

An MPI license allows Circle to offer digital payment token services and domestic and cross-border money transfer services, according to a statement released by the fintech firm, which is the issuer of the USD Coin (USDC) and Euro Coin (EUROC) stablecoins.

Circle has identified Singapore as its principal hub in Asia, according to the statement. Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire said:

“Singapore is integral to Circle’s global expansion."

Circle follows Crypto.com, which received its MPI license on June 1 after receiving approval in principle in June 2022. Other MPI license holders include DBS Vickers, Digital Treasures Center, Fomo Pay, Independent Reserve, Metacomp, Paxos, Revolut, Sparrow Tech and Hako. Gemini has also expressed interest in expanding to the city-state.

As crypto exchanges face SEC lawsuits, the company behind the $30 billion USD Coin believes that if regulation finally comes to crypto and stablecoins, its by-the-book approach will put it on top: by @ninabambysheva and @Steven_Ehrlich https://t.co/smlEV3b4ld
— Forbes Crypto (@ForbesCrypto) June 7, 2023

USDC is the world’s second-largest stablecoin, after Tether (USDT), but USDC has seen its market share fall from 34.88% to 23.05% in the last year as of May in favor of its larger competitor.

Six percent of the world’s crypto funds are based in Singapore, a study found in 2022. It ties with Switzerland and Hong Kong for third place worldwide, behind the United States and the United Kingdom, for that criterion. Singapore provides a positive environment for crypto through legislation and has a high rate of crypto adoption.

Temasek, the state-owned investment fund, is also a supporter of the crypto industry, with investments in such companies as Animoca Brands and Amber Group. It was also a major backer of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, with a $275 million investment.

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Crypto.com joins ranks of licensed payment institutions in Singapore

June 1, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Singapore’s Crypto.com expands its regulatory achievements by securing a license for digital payment token services.

The Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange, Crypto.com, announced on June 1 that it had been granted a major payment institution (MPI) license for digital payment token (DPT) services by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

The announcement comes after Crypto.com received its in-principle approval from MAS in June 2022. With the MPI license, Crypto.com is now authorized to offer its DPT services to customers in Singapore.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore serves as Singapore’s central bank and primary financial regulatory authority. It is responsible for overseeing and implementing legislation related to money, banking, insurance, securities and the overall financial industry, including the issuance of currency.

This latest announcement adds to Crypto.com’s track record of securing regulatory licenses. The exchange has also been granted registration as a digital asset service provider by the Autorité des Marchés Financiers in France and as a crypto asset business by the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority.

Furthermore, Crypto.com received approval for its minimal viable product preparatory license from the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, and acquired Electronic Financial Transaction Act and Virtual Asset Service Provider registration in South Korea. The company also secured registration approval as a digital currency exchange provider and independent remittance dealer in Australia from the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, as well as an Australian financial services license and Australian credit license from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. Crypto.com’s regulatory achievements also extend to registration in Italy from the Organismo Agenti e Mediatori, in Greece from the Hellenic Capital Market Commission, and in Cyprus from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In addition, the cryptocurrency exchange has recently broadened its user base in the United States, allowing users to utilize over 30 cryptocurrencies to make purchases across a selection of over 150 renowned consumer brands through its app. It released this feature on May 31.

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NY Fed and MAS publish joint CBDC cross-border payment project results

May 19, 2023 Coin Telegraph

CBDC

The researchers built on their separate projects to demonstrate cross-border payments using illiquid currencies with an intermediate “vehicle” currency.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s New York Innovation Center (NYIC) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) have published the results of their joint “Project Cedar Phase II x Ubin+.” The project examined the use of central bank digital currency (CBDC) for wholesale cross-border payments using one or more vehicle currencies.

A vehicle currency is a highly liquid currency used to facilitate the trading of two less liquid currencies. The first low-liquidity currency is converted into the vehicle currency, which is then converted into a second low-liquidity currency. MAS deputy managing director Leong Sing Chiong said in a statement:

“The Cedar x Ubin+ experiment envisages a future digital currency landscape where central banks can enable interoperability of wholesale CBDCs to facilitate more efficient cross-border payment flows including for less liquid currencies, without requiring a common infrastructure.”

Cedar x Ubin+ “builds on existing wholesale CBDC research,” according to the report, and focuses on interoperability, atomic settlement — the requirement that settlement be simultaneous for any of them to work — and near real-time settlement. The joint project began in November.

After examining the options, the project chose to use hashed timelock smart contracts to bridge ledgers on distinct distributed ledger systems to execute simulated cross-border, cross-currency payments. It also makes use of an “off-chain messaging channel.” The solution could work on non-blockchain systems as well, the report said.

Yesterday, in partnership with @MAS_sg, we released the Project Cedar Phase II x Ubin+ Research report. The study found that distributed ledger technology (DLT) could improve cross-border multi-currency payments and settlements. https://t.co/OKemxrYLZY
— New York Fed (@NewYorkFed) May 19, 2023

The project achieved interoperability using hashed timelock contracts in all test scenarios. Payments settled atomically at an average rate of 6.48 payments per second. End-to-end settlement averaged less than 30 seconds.

The MAS began its Project Ubin to explore CBDC in 2017. The NYIC was established in partnership with the Bank of International Settlements Innovation Hub in 2021.

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10 Southeast Asian Nations Challenge Dollar Dominance With Push for Local Currencies

May 14, 2023 Bitcoin.com

Bitcoin trading up 80% at DBS Bank due to crypto crashes in 2022, says exec

May 10, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Banks

DBS Bank’s crypto trading platform has been attracting more institutional investors due to crypto exchanges that collapsed last year.

Singapore government-owned megabank DBS is among the few companies around the world that reaped major benefits from massive cryptocurrency collapses in 2022.

DBS Digital Exchange, DBS Bank’s institutional crypto trading platform, saw a significant increase in Bitcoin (BTC) trading volumes last year. According to DBS Digital Exchange CEO Lionel Lim, the number of DBS crypto clients more than doubled in 2022 compared to the previous year.

“Bitcoin trading volumes grew 80% at the digital exchange during the same period,” Lim said in an interview with Cointelegraph on May 8.

The executive believes that the spike in demand for crypto services at DBS Digital Exchange is a consequence of crypto exchange collapses in 2022. Lim noted that DBS continues seeing a growing trend in volumes. He stated:

“DBS continues to benefit from the flight to safety and quality following the implosion of several exchanges last year.”

Evy Theunis, head of digital assets at DBS Bank, also told Cointelegraph that DBS has seen more cooperation enquiries from digital asset and blockchain firms in recent months.

Launched in 2020, DBS’ cryptocurrency exchange serves exclusively institutional investors. Despite considering expanding services to retail customers last year, DBS continues to be a members-only exchange serving corporate and institutional investors as of May 2023, Lim noted.

FTX is one of the biggest crypto exchanges that subsided in 2022. Before FTX collapsed in November 2022, the platform traded a significant amount of crypto coming from institutional investors. In March 2022, FTX launched a dedicated unit working with institutions. At the time, about two-thirds of trading volumes on FTX and FTX US were reportedly coming from institutional accounts.

While indicating a positive impact from crypto exchange crashes in 2022, DBS Digital Exchange CEO sees no influence coming from the ongoing banking crisis in the United States.

“Some of our market makers sought new USD banking rails following the collapse of the crypto-friendly US banks,” Lim said. However, there has been no direct impact on DBS’ crypto exchange, he noted, stating:

“The collapse of the US banks has not impacted our product and service pipeline. That said, we keep a close watch on these developments and are prepared to adjust our plans if necessary.”

While being a crypto-friendly bank itself, DBS is not worried about any risks allegedly stemming from its crypto exposure.

“DBS does not rehypothecate or trade digital assets in clients’ custody. As such, there is no liquidity risk,” Lim told Cointelegraph. “Our clients’ digital assets are in custody with DBS Bank, separate from DBS Digital Exchange,” the CEO noted.

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Coinbase remains ‘100% committed’ to US market: Armstrong

May 5, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Australia

The Coinbase CEO has a lot of faith in Congress in making a “clear rule book” for crypto firms to follow. But the SEC? Not so much.

United States-founded cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has no plans to move its operations out of the U.S., CEO Brian Armstrong told investors in an Q1 earnings call.

On May 5, Armstrong assured shareholders the firm is “100% committed” to the U.S. market over the long term despite regulatory uncertainty in the U.S.

“So let me be clear, we're 100% committed to the U.S. I founded this company in the United States because I saw that rule of law prevails here. That's really important, and I'm actually really optimistic on the U.S. getting this right.”

The “optimism” alluded to by Armstrong comes from his confidence in Congress soon passing a clear set of rules for crypto firms to follow:

“When I go visit DC, there is strong bipartisan support for Congress to come in and create new legislation that would create a clear rule book in the U.S. and I think it's really important for America to get this right.”

However, Armstrong’s comments weren’t entirely “optimistic.”

The chief executive is concerned about the unpredictable enforcement action of the Securities Exchange Commission, which comes in light of the firm being served with a Wells Notice by the securities regulator in late March:

“Despite our ongoing engagement with the commission, they have not been as clear about what their specific concerns are with Coinbase as we might like, and so I have to refrain from speculating too much.”

“It's especially difficult to predict the timeline of any potential SEC litigation that we might face,” Armstrong added.

The troubles led Coinbase to file an action in a U.S. federal court seeking to compel the SEC to answer a petition that has been pending since July.

Today, to provide greater transparency in our long-standing engagement with the SEC, we are sharing our response to the Wells notice we received last month. https://t.co/aquuWmxmRM
— Coinbase ️ (@coinbase) April 27, 2023

The back and forth comes as Coinbase launched Coinbase International Exchange (CIE) on May 2, which prompted many pundits to believe that Coinbase was looking for an escape route from the U.S.

The exchange is open to customers in 30 countries worldwide, including Singapore, Hong Kong, El Salvador, Philippines, Thailand and Bermuda — where CIE is now licensed from.

Today Coinbase launched Coinbase International Exchange @CoinbaseIntExch and will begin by offering BTC & ETH perpetual futures settled in USDC with up to 5x leverage to institutional clients in eligible jurisdictions outside of the U.S.https://t.co/OzhbgJlZ2K
— Coinbase ️ (@coinbase) May 2, 2023

Armstrong said the European Union is “in front” in terms of regulatory progress with its Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) legislation set to enter into effect in mid-2024 or early 2025:

“They've adopted comprehensive crypto legislation called MiCA, creates a single clear rule book for the entire region. It's pretty powerful.”

“I just got back from a trip from the U.K. and D.C. Both of those, both have draft bills in the works that are working on things like around stable coins and market structure Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, Brazil, all are essentially following in this direction,” Armstrong added.

The CEO’s remarks come as Coinbase managed to increase its revenue 22% and slashed its net income loss over $475 million to $79 million in Q1.

Our Q1'23 financial results are in and our letter to shareholders can be found on the Investor Relations website at https://t.co/8ovHEtPRgf pic.twitter.com/4iWAPGZNMh
— Coinbase ️ (@coinbase) May 4, 2023

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FTX investor Temasek pours $10M in algorithmic currency system Array

May 1, 2023 Coin Telegraph

FTX investor Temasek pours M in algorithmic currency system Array

Coin Telegraph

The new algorithmic currency system aims to provide a more “stable, efficient and scalable” asset than common coins like Bitcoin.

Singapore's government-owned investment firm Temasek continues investing in cryptocurrency projects even after losing hundreds of millions of dollars to the collapsed FTX crypto exchange.

Temasek has invested $10 million in Array, the developer of an algorithmic currency system based on smart contracts and artificial intelligence.

Announcing the news on May 1, Array said that the raise is its second funding round, which is believed to bring the firm’s valuation to more than $100 million.

The new Temasek-backed algorithmic currency system aims to provide a more “stable, efficient and scalable” asset than traditional cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC). The system is expected to have a variety of use cases, including payments, remittances as well as investments.

Array’s smart contract platform, ArrayFi, is designed to enable decentralized applications built on top of its network and driven by its proprietary AI algorithm ArrayGo. Based on the bonding curve smart contract, ArrayGo operates independently, without any human or institutional control, and is triggered solely by market actions, the firm said.

“In order to ensure the value of the token remains stable and predictable for investors and traders indefinitely, a traditional bonding curve is implemented manually,” the Array team noted in a Medium blog post. The bonding curve is implemented into a smart contract that governs the issuance and trading of the native token Ara (ARA).

According to Array’s first Twitter Space conducted in February, the company’s bounding curve mathematics aims to ensure that Array users are protected against “pump and dump” schemes.

Temasek’s investment in Array comes several months after the Singapore government openly admitted that the company suffered reputational damage due to investing in the collapsed crypto exchange FTX. In November 2022, Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong argued that Temasek suffered a lot more than just financial losses due to investing in FTX.

Temasek, which is fully owned by the Ministry of Finance but operates independently, was forced to write down its entire $275 million FTX investment. The amount accounted for just 0.09% of Temasek’s $403 billion portfolio as of March 2022.

In April, Temasek also participated in a $10 million series A round for the United States-based impact-verification and intelligence firm BlueMark.

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Majority of creditors want Hodlnaut liquidated

April 25, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Only 2.42% of claimants favor restructuring, and they are almost exclusively company directors. Withdrawals were frozen in August.

Creditors of Singapore-based cryptocurrency lender have again expressed their desire to liquidate the company, which has been under judicial management since August 2022. There is no white knight investor on the horizon, interim judicial manager (IJM) Aaron Loh Cheng Lee explained in a circular updating the case.

A circular from the IJMs dated April 25 said users representing approximately 55.38% of creditors, with claims of 228.3 million Singapore dollars (about $170.5 million), have indicated they would favor liquidation over restructuring. No source of fresh capital has been found, the letter noted, despite the founders’ efforts to find new investors:

“There appears to be no indication of a white knight investor to date, and hence no prospect of any fresh capital injection.”

Only users with 2.42% of claims supported restructuring, and almost all of those claims comprised company directors, and a mediation proposal had been opposed by the “major” creditors. The major creditors include Samtrade Custodian and S.A.M. Fintech, both in liquidation, and the Algorand Foundation. Algorand has $35 million exposure to Hodlnaut.

The Singapore court directed the IJMs to petition to “wind-up” the company and apply to discharge themselves, according to the letter.

Hodlnaut announced it was suspending withdrawals on Aug. 8, 2022, due to a liquidity crisis. It applied for judicial management the following week, which under Singaporean law, temporarily protected it against legal claims. “We are aiming to avoid a forced liquidation of our assets as it […] will require us to sell our users’ cryptocurrencies such as BTC, ETH and WBTC at these current depressed asset prices,” the company said at the time.

Aaron Loh Cheng Lee and another IJM are affiliated with EY Corporate Advisors.

It's nice to see #Algorand being involved in not one but two lawsuits in Singapore.

Hodlnaut $35m
3AC $53.5m (wimding up application dismissed)

That's a lot of $ to be losing for the not for profit foundation with a limited runway to build out Algorand. https://t.co/8cNsYapxxA
— Puki Mak (@Pukimakinc) April 16, 2023

The company was reportedly under police investigation for misrepresenting its exposure to the Terra stablecoin now called TerraUSD Classic (USTC). On-chain data indicated the company had held at least $150 million worth of the defunct coin, despite claims to the contrary. Company executives deleted thousands of documents to hide their exposure.

Creditors began seeking the company’s liquidation in January.

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China and Singapore team up to scale green and transition financing

April 23, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Asia

China and Singapore will collaborate “on concrete initiatives that will catalyze capital flows to support a credible and inclusive transition to a low carbon future for our countries and the region.”

Major Asian economies, China and Singapore, have set up a task force to deepen bilateral cooperation in green and transition finance. The move is aimed at facilitating greater public-private sector collaboration for a low-carbon future in the region.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced the collaboration with the People’s Bank of China (PBC) in establishing the China-Singapore Green Finance Taskforce (GFTF). With GFTF, the duo aims to co-develop a set of financial standards, products, technologies and definitions to lower carbon footprints.

According to MAS’ assistant managing director and chief sustainability officer, Gillian Tan, public-private participants from China and Singapore will collaborate “on concrete initiatives that will catalyze capital flows to support a credible and inclusive transition to a low carbon future for our countries and the region.”

For starters, the GFTF will allow MAS and PBC to find a common ground for taxonomies and definitions with respect to each other’s existing transition activities. The task force will also enable the countries to strengthen sustainability bond market connectivity, which includes two-way access to green and transition bond products.

GFTF’s technology initiative will see the involvement of MetaVerse Green Exchange, a licensed crypto exchange from Singapore and Beijing Green Exchange, a Beijing municipal government-approved company, to help facilitate sustainable finance adoption. The two companies are also tasked with piloting digital green bonds with carbon credits.

Chinese banks are reportedly opening bank accounts for regulated crypto companies, with several acting as a payment layer for the crypto platforms.

While Chinese state-owned Bank of Communications is in talks to open accounts for regulated companies, ZA Bank, Hong Kong’s largest virtual bank will act as the settlement bank for the crypto companies, according to Wall Street Journal report.

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Singapore

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