Singapore Monetary Authority Puts Binance On Its Investor Warning List

Singapore’s financial regulator, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), has put one of the biggest crypto exchanges to date to its list of unregulated persons who, based on information received by MAS, may have been wrongly perceived as being licensed or regulated by MAS.

Singapore’s actions on Binance are similar to the warnings, issued by the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority on several crypto exchanges.

According to the MAS, “Binance may be in breach of the Payments Services Act for providing payment services to, and soliciting business from, Singapore residents without an appropriate license.”

Such regulatory actions aren’t anything new for Binance, as the U.K., Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong already added regulatory scrutiny for one of the biggest crypto exchanges.

Binance, however, doesn’t seem affected by the new set of regulatory hurdles and the company, as well as its BNB token, which exploded ten-fold in 2021 alone. Also, the exchange is attempting to become regulation compliant by intermediate verification levels for all users, and hiring a former treasury investigator to be its Global AML Chief.

Meanwhile, Singapore may also be on the foothills of CBDC development, in conjunction with Australia, Malaysia, and South Africa.

Despite none of the four countries is currently developing a CBDC product, its central banks joined forces into understanding the mechanisms behind constructing and operating a CBDC.

Тhe Reserve Bank of Australia, Bank Negara Malaysia, Monetary Authority of Singapore, and South African Reserve Bank, joined forces in the so-called "Project Dunbar", which plans to demonstrate that digital money can cut costs and reduce transaction times.

Тhis joint venture is the latest trial in the faster, cheaper, cross-border payments, as the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) is working on a similar trial with Swiss and French Banks.

The G20 group of nations, on the other hand, wants to standardize the cross-border payment area, with Project Dunbar acting as a contribution to G20’s work. However, most of the actions are an urgent response to China’s ongoing digital yuan development, sparking work on CBDCs for at least seven major economies.