Move aims to safeguard Singapore’s financial reputation.
More entities will now be regulated and oversight made tighter.
Singapore has given the green light to a new law that provides stricter oversight of cryptocurrency providers, reports confirm.
Singapore-based virtual asset service providers (VASPs) will need to be licensed even if they only carry out business overseas. These entities will now be regulated under anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing guidelines (CFT).
The Financial Services and Markets Bill states, “Entities that conduct the business of providing digital token (DT) services in Singapore are subject to current legislation regardless of where they are established. However, DT service providers created in Singapore without providing any DT services in Singapore are currently unregulated for AML/CFT.”
This move aims to safeguard the island’s reputation for financial probity as it plays host to more crypto-related businesses. Every crypto-related platform seems to be grouped together including DeFi protocols like Curve, open source platforms like Tea, as well as crypto exchanges and NFT platforms.
Additionally, the bill ensures that the AML/CFT requirements imposed on digital payment token service providers, under the Payment Services Act, are in line with those of digital token (DT) service providers. It also gives more power to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) over the virtual asset sector.