Singapore Makes More Steps to Become a Crypto Haven and Blockchain Hub

Singapore, a financial center of the world is recently known as one of the ‘Crypto Havens’ because of its balanced regulatory and legal regimes as defined by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MSA). The regulatory body promotes investor-friendly laws that make Singapore a massively growing marketplace for blockchain technologies and cryptocurrency. The businesses operating in the country are growing massively strengthening the overall economy and expanding businesses. One of the reasons behind Singapore’s conductive reputation is the junction of high standards of education, internet inclusion and adoption of innovative solutions at the business levels.

To continue the cryptocurrency-related activity in Singapore, businesses need to register and get licensed as per the Payment Services Act by MSA. This act gives the regulatory body the authority to supervise all the payment businesses running in the country. The payment companies, therefore, are required to register their businesses with MAS in a month. After registering, in the next 6 months, they would have to apply for the company to get licensed.

As per InWara, in terms of ICOs, Singapore is announced to be the second to the USA in 2018. With the transparent environment of working of cryptocurrency businesses, in no years, Singapore will be known as the accelerator of the Fintech world because of its significant role in expanding financial businesses. Among those, cryptocurrency/blockchain businesses are growing rapidly and are changing the landscape of Singapore. The government of Singapore said that it will be giving start-up funding to the cryptocurrency companies to connect the stakeholders in the crypto world.

The Singapore government is encouraging the promotion of digital token offerings and MAS is opening ways to categorize payment, digital tokens, and security tokens. Singapore because of endless qualities to maintain a cryptocurrency ecosystem is capable of providing a stable environment for economy, attractive tax. Such quality attributes coupled with the ease Singapore provides to conduct business present a great opportunity for startups and their founders to launch ICOs.

By the development of the cryptocurrency project named “Project Ubin”, Singapore is showing confidence in the blockchain technology. As per MAS, the project aims at producing a digital token for the Singapore currency (dollars) on Ethereum blockchain. The purpose of this is to make financial transactions more efficient and cheap.

As per Chief FinTech Officer of MAS Sopnendu Mohanty:

“Billions of the future of the financial sector relies on this whole shift from a physical to a digital world. Because there are certain financial stability implications, if you’re going with the right technology, but you don’t understand the relevance of the new technology, you may actually not have a lot of customers in the whole space. How to get to the right space is a big part of our effort.”

This project is in its early stages and the Singapore government, as well as central banks, have backed the Project Ubin. In Singapore, the virtual currency is not regulated. However, the activities started in the country determine it will be regulated as per the legislation.

Image courtesy of Chayora