Singapore Financial News

Bybit, the Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange, has announced the launch of its new debit card that will allow users to make payments and withdraw cash using their cryptocurrency holdings. The Bybit card will operate on the Mastercard network and will initially allow fiat-based transactions by debiting cryptocurrency balances when used to pay for goods and services. The new service begins with the launch of a free virtual card for online purchases, while physical debit cards are set to be available in April 2023. The card will work with Bitcoin, Ether, Tether, USD Coin, and XRP balances on user accounts. Payments made with the Bybit card will automatically convert the balances of these initial cryptocurrencies into euros or pounds, depending on the user's country of residence.

Sandbox participants included the Banque de France, the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Intesa Sanpaolo, NatWest, Royal Bank of Canada, SMBC, Société Générale, Standard Chartered and UBS.Tom Zschach, chief innovation officer at Swift, comments: “Our experiments have shown the critical role that Swift can play in a financial ecosystem in which digital and traditional currencies co-exist. Our API-based CBDC connector has been proven to be robust across almost 5,000 transactions between two different blockchain networks and traditional fiat currency, and we’re delighted to have the support of our community in developing it further.

Terra Luna Classic (LUNC) continues to endure bleed-out price action, as authorities in Singapore open investigation into Do Kwon - can LUNC recover?

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Singapore authorities have launched a probe into Do Kwon's Terraform Labs, the entity that developed the now-collapsed TerraUSD stablecoin.

The troubled crypto lending firm Babel Finance is working on a new plan to raise money through a crypto-backed stablecoin.

Last Friday’s crypto market dip on Silvergate Bank concerns weighed heavily on Luna Classic (LUNC), the cryptocurrency that powers the original but not largely defunct Terra blockchain ecosystem. After dipping more than 10% on Friday from near $0.00017 to around $0.00015, the cryptocurrency has since eased a little lower to stabilize in the mid-$0.00014s. Price predictions thus remains somewhat downbeat.

Local authorities in Singapore announced they had begun a probe that is connected to Do Kwon’s Terraform Labs.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulation through “enforcement,” as opposed to “doing the work,” is not a “healthy way” to regulate an industry, and may result in the U.S being a less attractive place for crypto innovation, suggests Ripple’s CEO.

The digital rupee (e), India’s recently launched in-house central bank digital currency (CBDC), is now being tested for offline functionality, revealed Ajay Kumar Choudhary, executive director of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The RBI is the central bank and regulatory body of India.

India’s recently launched in-house central bank digital currency (CBDC) — the digital rupee — is now being tested for offline functionality, revealed Ajay Kumar Choudhary, executive director of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Amid struggles to maintain access to the global banking system, the companies behind Singapore-based USDT stablecoin issuer Tether used a mixture of fraudulent documents, obscured identities and shell companies, according to a new bombshell report by the Wall Street Journal.

Binance's custody unit Ceffu said on Thursday it is planning to apply for a permit to offer payment services in Singapore, as the crypto exchange makes another attempt to function in the crypto-friendly city-state. «Once the relevant amendments to the Payment Services Act go live and the application for a custody license opens, Ceffu will make its official application with the MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore),» the unit's Vice President Athena Yu said in a statement to Reuters. The unit, launched in 2021, was recently rebranded to Ceffu from Binance Custody. Late last year U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase, Crypto.com and DBS Vickers — brokerage run by Singapore's largest bank DBS — received similar approval from the central bank to offer payment services in the country.

The BIS and central banks around the world are working on a host of innovations, including CBDCs and tokenisation of different assets, including tokenised deposits. "But," Carstens says in a speech at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, "to fully realise the transformative potential of these new financial technologies, we need some way to bring them all together." This is where the unified ledger comes in, offering the potential to combine the monetary system with other registries of real and financial claims. Such a ledger would be a public-private partnership with a clear division of roles, and where the central bank is tasked with underpinning the trust in money.

The figures from FinTech Global Research show that fintech companies based in Singapore were engaged in a record number of deals in 2022 with 232 deals in total.

Major cryptocurrencies were trading in the red on March 3 as the global crypto market cap decreased 2.92 percent to $1.05 trillion, over the last day. The total crypto market volume over the last 24 hours decreased 11.37 percent to $43.16 billion.

According to an official Telegram statement on March 1, Singaporean cross-chain crypto wallet developer BitKeep says it has reimbursed 50% of user assets lost during a security breach stemming from Dec. 26, 2022. On the date of the incident, an estimated $8 million was stolen by hackers after BitKeep's APK 7.2.9 (Android Package Kit) installation package was hijacked and swapped. Users who downloaded the malware subsequently saw their private keys compromised, leading to the theft of assets. 

Amid various reports about Binance trying to revive its crypto licensing plans in Singapore, the crypto exchange has come out to set the record straight. Binance told Cointelegraph that Ceffu, its "independent institutional custody partner," is the one looking to apply for an institutional crypto custody license when Singapore’s central bank opens up applications.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has warned that a hostile regulatory approach by the Securities and Exchange Commission could drive the crypto industry outside of the United States. 

Singapore, a broadly crypto-friendly city-state, has previously presented challenges for Binance.