The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the country’s central bank, issued a statement on November 21 to address “some questions and misconceptions that have arisen in the wake of the FTX.com (FTX) debacle.”
The first point that MAS wanted to make was that it could not protect local users from the consequences of FTX’s collapse “such as by fencing off its assets or ensuring that FTX backed its assets with reserves” because “FTX is not licensed by MAS and operates abroad.” MAS has consistently warned about the dangers of dealing with unregulated entities.”
However, it was Binance that ended up on the MAS investor watch list. This was because Binance, unlike FTX, was actively targeting Singaporean users with Singapore dollar-denominated offerings and payment options through local transmitters. The MAS noted that it had received “several” complaints about Binance between January and August 2021.
The MAS caused Binance to stop soliciting users from Singapore and take various steps to demonstrate compliance, such as geo-blocking local IP addresses.. He also referred Binance to the country’s Department of Commercial Affairs to investigate whether the exchange had violated the Payment Services Law. However, users in Singapore were able to access FTX services.
The purpose of the Investor Alert List, MAS explained, is to “warn the public of entities that may be misperceived as being regulated by MAS, especially those that solicit Singaporean clients for financial business without the required MAS license.” This does not mean that the list should contain all the “hundreds” of crypto exchanges around the world, according to the MAS. “It is not possible to do a list of all of them and no regulator in the world has done it,” he said.
hey @MAS_sg of Singapore, are you kidding me? The most important lesson that you learned from FTX is that dealing in any cryptocurrency is “hazardous”? How about do some basic Due Diligence before your sovereign fund @Temasek plows US$275M of your citizens’ money into a ponzi pic.twitter.com/8Q6UYYYWlm
— Bobby Apelrod / / nicefeet.sol (@tofushit888) November 21, 2022
Hey MAS from Singapore, are you kidding? The most important lesson you’ve learned from FTX is that trading any cryptocurrency is “dangerous”? How about doing some basic due diligence before your Temasek sovereign wealth fund invests $275 million of your citizens’ money in a ponzi?
MAS went on to give extensive warnings about the volatility of crypto assets, conceding:
“Even if a cryptocurrency exchange is authorized in Singapore, it would currently only be regulated to address money laundering risks, not to protect investors. This is similar to the approach currently taken in most jurisdictions.”
However, the MAS published a consultation document on consumer protection for cryptocurrency users in October.
The state investment company Temasek issued a statement on November 19 stating that it had conducted eight months of due diligence on FTX in 2021 without discovering any issues. Singapore police have issued a warning about phishing sites trying to profit from the confusion surrounding the FTX collapse.
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