- Coinbase CEO says Singapore must embrace retail trading.
- Singapore has been limiting high-risk investment vehicles like crypto leverage.
- Several crypto businesses have received licenses to operate in the past months.
Singapore has made significant moves to become a global cryptocurrency and web3 powerhouse, but it also aims to tighten rules on crypto assets, including measures to limit residents’ access to credit facilities and leverage. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong claims these restrictions undermine the nation’s web3 goals.
Speaking on a panel at the Singapore FinTech Festival on Friday, Armstrong said, “To say Singapore wants to be a web3 hub and then simultaneously say we are not really going to allow retail to trade is incompatible.”
While Singapore aims to become a worldwide crypto powerhouse, the city-state has issued numerous warnings that cryptocurrency trading is “highly risky and not suitable for the general public” owing to its speculative and unpredictable character.
Armstrong has stated that he hopes to see Singapore “embrace retail trading.” In addition, he said that custodians and centralized cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase should be governed in the same way as traditional financial institutions in the nation.
The comments from Armstrong come just weeks after the cryptocurrency exchange was granted in-principal approval for a DPT license to operate in Singapore.
Speaking at the same event, Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, doubled down on the city state’s ambitions, stating:
If a crypto hub is about experimenting with programmable money, applying digital assets for use cases, or tokenizing financial assets to increase efficiency and reduce risk in financial transactions, yes, we want to be a crypto hub
In the meantime, regulators in Singapore have been green-lighting crypto businesses to set up shops in the nation. Under the Payment Services Act, Paxos, the company behind the USDP stablecoin, was given the approval to offer its cryptocurrency products on November 2.
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