Crypto’s ‘Future Is on the Right Path,’ Says Singapore FinTech Regulator

Sopnendu Mohanty, chief FinTech officer with Singapore’s regulator, is praising the leadership of some big crypto firms — saying several leaders like Binance and Crypto.com are “fully committed” to building a sustainable system to solve problems, Bloomberg reported Saturday (June 25).

In a LinkedIn post, he said the CEOs of these companies are identifying “real-economy opportunities.”

“It is heartening to see the clarity among CEOs on the need to create a responsible and compliant industry,” said Mohanty, an official with the Monetary Authority of Singapore. “The future is on the right path.”

This came a few days after he’d said the country is “brutal and unrelentingly hard” on bad behavior in the crypto industry.

Singapore had been an early supporter of blockchain tech — and officials have said they want the city to be a global crypto hub. But there has been a rift with the industry following slow regulatory processes for license approvals and a ban on crypto advertising.

Mohanty, who was speaking about his thoughts on the Point Zero Forum in Switzerland, spoke as the digital currency market was falling, with a big selloff in assets and the collapse of the TerraUSD and Luna tokens, along with firms like Celsius and Babel Finance freezing withdrawals.

There has also been a big drop in the value of cryptocurrencies — after topping $3 trillion in November, it has now dropped to $991 billion, CoinGecko data said.

Mohanty has also recently questioned the value of private cryptocurrencies, with regulators stepping up developing a central bank digital currency (CBDC), PYMNTS wrote.

See also: Singapore’s Chief FinTech Officer Questions Value of Private Crypto

He said he thinks there will be a state-backed digital asset, an alternative to crypto, in the next three years.

The report quoted him saying that while Singapore hasn’t been considered friendly for crypto, he says “… friendly for what? Friendly for a real economy or friendly for some unreal economy?”

Binance closed its cryptocurrency trading platform in Singapore earlier this year, and has nixed plans to get a license there due to the stricter rules.

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