By The current chief of Singapore’ Central Bank Ravi Menon, recently announced that country will be supporting local crypto startups & exchanges with banking services.
Ravi Menon is the managing director of MAS or the Monetary Institute of Singapore & has called for the traditional banking sector to get over the “hurdle” that is offering banking services to crypto companies in attempts to nurture the fintech industry in Singapore.
Menon said, in an interview with Bloomberg, that Singapore will not be “ an extremely lax regulatory environment” for crypto companies domestically & abroad but that will be a reprieve for the many crypto companies that have been rejected by banks.
The Central Bank official had this to say:
“What we are trying to do is to bring the banks and cryptocurrency fintech startups together to see if there is some understanding they can reach.”
This decision is in direct contrast to that of India, whose Central Bank has forbidden all financial institutions including banks to cease offering services to crypto companies. As we know the Indian government’s decision has left quite an imprint on the industry as the world of crypto lost one of the biggest crypto exchanges due to closure.
Menon, being the senior central bank official that he is, has in the past ruled out regulation for decentralized open cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, stating that BTC “itself does not pose the risk that warrants regulation”.
“Our approach is to look at the activity around the cryptocurrency and then make an assessment of what regulation would be suitable,” said Menon in 2017 as he called for oversight into activities that could abuse crypto.
When the crypto markets reached the all-time back in January this year, following a bull-run through most of last year, Menon made it his mission to bring attention to the “good applications” using cheap, real-time, international remittance as examples.
“I do hope when the fever has gone away, when the crash has happened, it will not undermine the much deeper, and more meaningful technology associated with digital currencies and blockchain,” Menon stated back in the first quarter of 2018.
Singapore’s current open-minded ecosystem for crypto was the catalyst for Upbit, a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange to establish a new exchange in Singapore just last month and exchange giant Binance has also announced their plans to launch a fiat/crypto exchange in Singapore.
Could all these permissive nations spark a near-future wave of other countries jumping on the regulation and adoption bandwagon for crypto companies? Let us know your thoughts.
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