Singapore Will Crack Down on Bad Crypto Behavior: Report

Singapore's central bank will be "brutal and unrelentingly hard" on bad behavior in the crypto industry, Sopnendu Mohanty, the chief fintech officer at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, told the Financial Times.

• In an interview with the newspaper, Sopnendu Mohanty said Singapore has enforced a “painfully slow” and “extremely draconian due diligence process” for licensing crypto businesses in order to protect the wider economy.
• In April, Three Arrows Capital, a hedge fund that has suffered heavy losses in the recent market downturn, said it will leave Singapore for Dubai, as the regulatory environment in Singapore sours. Earlier, Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange by trading volume, shut down its Singapore unit and dropped its application for a license after MAS told it to stop all crypto transfers.
• Mohanty's comments come after the collapse of the terraUSD (UST) stablecoin in May roiled crypto markets that were already dropping from November's highs because of macroeconomic conditions.
• “We have no tolerance for any market bad behavior," he said.
• Still, while the process may be tortured, that hasn't prevented some crypto companies from staying on course. The country recently granted in-principle digital token payment licenses to crypto exchange Crypto.com and two other companies.