'Brutal and unrelentingly hard': Singapore regulator's clampdown on crypto

cointelegraph.com:

Singapore’s financial regulator and central bank has pledged to be “brutal and unrelentingly hard” on any “bad behavior” from the cryptocurrency industry.

The comments come from Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)’s chief fintech officer Sopnendu Mohanty, explaining in an interview that “if somebody has done a bad thing, we are brutal and unrelentingly hard.”

He also hit back at the rhetoric of certain crypto market participants who have criticized the regulator for not being friendly enough to crypto, and instead questioned the legitimacy of the market, saying:

The fintech chief believes the world is “lost in private currency” and is the cause behind the wider market turmoil. Mohanty added the city-state enacted an “extremely draconian” and “painfully slow” due diligence process for licensing crypto businesses in response to the conservative stance the regulator has towards crypto.

Singapore introduced licensing for crypto firms in January 2020 and has been stringent on which companies are approved for a license. Cointelegraph reported in December 2022 that the MAS had knocked-back approvals for over 100 licenses from companies who had applied.

In January cryptocurrency providers were barred from advertising their services in public areas such as public transportation which extended to public websites as well as print, broadcast and social media.

MAS is extending its ability to police crypto businesses too, in April the regulator passed new requirements for firms to obtain a license and be subject to Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism requirements if they wanted to provide services outside of the country.

Related: Singapore to explore digital asset tokenization on public chains

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