The Financial Authority of Singapore (MAS), the nation’s central financial institution, released a press release on Nov. 21 to deal with “some questions and misconceptions which have arisen within the wake of the FTX.com (FTX) debacle.”
The primary level MAS needed to make was that it couldn’t defend native customers from the fallout from FTX collapse “equivalent to by ringfencing their property or guaranteeing that FTX backed its property with reserves” as a result of “FTX isn’t licensed by MAS and operates offshore. MAS has constantly warned concerning the risks of coping with unregulated entities.”
But, it was Binance that ended up on the MAS Investor Alert Record. That was as a result of Binance, not like FTX, was actively focusing on customers in Singapore with choices denominated in Singapore {dollars} and cost choices by way of native transmitters. MAS famous that it had acquired “a number of” complaints about Binance between January and August 2021.
MAS made Binance cease soliciting Singaporean customers and take a number of measures to point out its compliance, equivalent to geo-blocking native IP addresses. It additionally referred Binance to the nation’s Industrial Affairs Division to research whether or not the trade had violated the Cost Companies Act. Singaporean customers have been, nonetheless, in a position to entry FTX providers.
Associated: MAS doesn’t belief retail crypto investments, mulling extra rules
The aim of the Investor Alert Record, MAS defined, is “to warn the general public of entities which may be wrongly perceived as being MAS-regulated, particularly these which solicit Singapore clients for monetary enterprise with out the requisite MAS licence.” That doesn’t imply that the listing ought to comprise all the “lots of” of crypto exchanges worldwide, in keeping with MAS. “It’s not doable to listing all of them and no regulator on this planet has finished so,” it stated.
Hey @MAS_sg of Singapore, are you kidding me? A very powerful lesson that you simply discovered from FTX is that dealing in any cryptocurrency is “hazardous”? How about do some fundamental Due Diligence earlier than your sovereign fund @Temasek plows US$275M of your residents’ cash right into a ponzi pic.twitter.com/8Q6UYYYWlm
— Bobby Apelrod / / nicefeet.sol (@tofushit888) November 21, 2022
MAS went on to make in depth warnings concerning the volatility of crypto property, and conceded:
“Even when a crypto trade is licensed in Singapore, it might be at present solely regulated to deal with money-laundering dangers, to not defend traders. That is just like the method at present taken in most jurisdictions.”
MAS released a session paper on client protections for crypto customers in October, nevertheless.
State-owned funding agency Temasek issued a press release on Nov. 19 saying that it had finished eight months of due diligence on FTX in 2021 with out discovering uncovering any issues. Singaporean police have issued a warning about phishing websites attempting to money in on the confusion surrounding the FTX collapse.