Singapore’s ambitious cryptocurrency sector, by some measures the Asia-Pacific region’s largest, faces an uncertain future after the recent collapse of crypto fund Three Arrows Capital Pte Ltd (3AC, 三箭資本), a high-profile casualty of the global digital currency downturn.
Crypto players in Southeast Asia’s financial hub are bracing for further bankruptcies and legal tussles, and expect that regulators at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), whose welcoming approach helped to attract firms from China, India and elsewhere, might become less accommodating.
“After recent events it appears likely that the MAS will get tougher on crypto and digital assets,” said Hoi Tak Leung (梁愷德), a senior technology sector lawyer at Ashurst LLP.
Photo: Bloomberg
Investment in Singapore’s crypto and blockchain companies surged to US$1.48 billion last year, KPMG said, 10 times the previous year and nearly half the Asia-Pacific total for the year.
Regulators at the MAS have said they hope to encourage crypto-related services, a sharp contrast with China’s ban, a crypto tax in India that has crippled trading and incoming rules in Hong Kong restricting crypto investing to professionals.
More than 150 crypto companies applied for a new crypto payments license from the MAS in 2020, although so far only a handful have received one.
However, the picture has grown murky with the collapse of 3AC, which began liquidation proceedings in the British Virgin Islands on June 27, court filings showed, after the global downturn in digital currencies left it unable to meet hundreds of millions of dollars in obligations.
3AC did not respond to a request for comment and its liquidators told a US bankruptcy court that they cannot locate the fund’s founders, Kyle Davies and Zhu Su (蘇朱).
The ripple effects of 3AC’s collapse — and the subsequent market turmoil — have been swift and severe. Singapore-based crypto lending and trading platform Vauld last week said that it would suspend withdrawals, and the following day a rival crypto lender said it planned to acquire the company.
Another fund, Mirana, is suing 3AC in Singapore over a loan agreement, local media reported, citing court filings which are not available publicly.
Mirana did not reply to requests for comment.
In the US, crypto lender Voyager Digital Ltd filed for bankruptcy last week, days after 3AC defaulted on a crypto loan worth US$650 million it was owed, while crypto exchanges Genesis and Blockchain.com have also disclosed losses on their dealings with 3AC.
Rose Kehoe, managing director in Kroll’s restructuring practice in Singapore, said that in the coming weeks she expects crypto-related businesses facing liquidity issues to use Singapore’s mechanisms for court protection of companies in restructuring.
“We will continue to see crypto markets globally being impacted by the contagion effect of recent market events, including in Singapore, a major cryptocurrency hub,” she said.
Sector players are also wary of how Singapore’s regulators might react.
“If Singapore decides to take a more hawkish approach towards crypto businesses in future, other countries in [Southeast Asia] could follow suit,” said Jeff Mei, chief marketing officer at ChainUp, a Singapore crypto company. “[This] could open a gap for Hong Kong to step into the arena more meaningfully.”
MAS did not comment on the matter, but on June 30 it issued a rare public reprimand to 3AC for breaching fund rules and added it was investigating the company on potential further breaches.
“I think [MAS] wanted to send a signal to the industry to say: ‘3AC was already on our watch list,’” said Hagen Rooke, a Singapore-based partner at law firm Reed Smith LLP.
He said that such misdemeanors would normally be handled with a private rap on the knuckles.
“The question is whether the MAS is going to become even more draconian in its approach to the crypto industry,” he added, identifying new rules around crypto borrowing and lending as one likely regulatory focus.
SEMICONDUCTORS: The German laser and plasma generator company will expand its local services as its specialized offerings support Taiwan’s semiconductor industries Trumpf SE + Co KG, a global leader in supplying laser technology and plasma generators used in chip production, is expanding its investments in Taiwan in an effort to deeply integrate into the global semiconductor supply chain in the pursuit of growth. The company, headquartered in Ditzingen, Germany, has invested significantly in a newly inaugurated regional technical center for plasma generators in Taoyuan, its latest expansion in Taiwan after being engaged in various industries for more than 25 years. The center, the first of its kind Trumpf built outside Germany, aims to serve customers from Taiwan, Japan, Southeast Asia and South Korea,
Gasoline and diesel prices at domestic fuel stations are to fall NT$0.2 per liter this week, down for a second consecutive week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to drop to NT$26.4, NT$27.9 and NT$29.9 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to fall to NT$24.8 per liter at CPC stations and NT$24.6 at Formosa pumps, they said. The price adjustments came even as international crude oil prices rose last week, as traders
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which supplies advanced chips to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday reported NT$1.046 trillion (US$33.1 billion) in revenue for last quarter, driven by constantly strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, falling in the upper end of its forecast. Based on TSMC’s financial guidance, revenue would expand about 22 percent sequentially to the range from US$32.2 billion to US$33.4 billion during the final quarter of 2024, it told investors in October last year. Last year in total, revenue jumped 31.61 percent to NT$3.81 trillion, compared with NT$2.89 trillion generated in the year before, according to
PRECEDENTED TIMES: In news that surely does not shock, AI and tech exports drove a banner for exports last year as Taiwan’s economic growth experienced a flood tide Taiwan’s exports delivered a blockbuster finish to last year with last month’s shipments rising at the second-highest pace on record as demand for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware and advanced computing remained strong, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. Exports surged 43.4 percent from a year earlier to US$62.48 billion last month, extending growth to 26 consecutive months. Imports climbed 14.9 percent to US$43.04 billion, the second-highest monthly level historically, resulting in a trade surplus of US$19.43 billion — more than double that of the year before. Department of Statistics Director-General Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜) described the performance as “surprisingly outstanding,” forecasting export growth
RSS