Australian cryptocurrency exchange Independent Reserve is announcing an expansion of its services to Singapore as part of an effort to branch out into the APAC region, according to an official statement released by the exchange on Friday, January 24.
Adrian Przelozny, the exchange’s chief executive officer and founder, said that the move follows “a number of positive moves by Singaporean regulators, including the introduction of the Payments Services Act by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).” The MAS is the country’s central bank and financial regulatory authority.
According to an official statement from the Singaporean government, the “Payment Services (PS) Act is a forward-looking and flexible framework for the Regulation of payment systems and payment service providers in Singapore.”
The country’s parliament passed the Act on January 14, 2019; it provides legal definitions for and designations for payment services (including crypto-based payment services) and is scheduled to go into effect on the 28th of this month.
"We’ll soon be integrating Singaporean dollar trading pairs into our platform."
Following the exchange’s expansion, residents of Singapore will have the ability to buy, trade, and hold digital currencies on Independent Reserve’s platform. So far, 120,000 customers from Australia and New Zealand have signed onto the exchange. Przelonzny claims that Independent Reserve is “the only Australian exchange to have insurance on crypto assets.”
“As part of this, we’ll soon be integrating Singaporean dollar trading pairs into our platform,” Przelozny added.
According to data from CoinMarketCap, at press time, Independent Reserve’s 24-hour trading volume was equivalent to US$1,062,196, and there were 27 open markets. In 2018, Independent Reserve was one of two crypto exchanges that were the first to confirm compliance with anti-money-laundering, counter-terrorism financing laws laid out by the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC)
Crypto developments in Singapore and Australia
Earlier this month, Business Insider reported that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has been working on developing its own digital currency denominated in AUD, although the bank was “adamant that for now it has no intentions of releasing it to the public, instead seeing it as a currency to possibly be used between Australian banks.”
No such plans have been announced in Singapore. However, according to a report by Lexology, “the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) [has been] exploring the use of distributed ledger technology for clearing and settling payments and securities since late 2016.”
Additionally, Finance Magnates reported in November that the MAS "is working to allow derivatives trading of cryptocurrency tokens like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) on approved exchanges in the country.” The report originally appeared in the Business Times.
MAS mulls regulating trade of payment token derivatives. https://t.co/kZpKyLXpij
— The Business Times (@BusinessTimes) November 20, 2019
Yesterday, the Bank of International Settlements published a report that found that 80% of the central banks that responded are working on central bank digital currency projects, and that “some 40% of central banks have progressed from conceptual research to experiments, or proofs-of-concept,” while only “10% have developed pilot projects.”
