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Respondents to the Monetary Authority of Singapore's November 2019 consulation were broadly supportive of its proposals as to how to regulate payment token derivatives offered by an "Approved Exchange" as well as to not regulate at non-approved exchanges. The MAS agreed and said regulating non-approved exchanges would confer "misplaced confidence" - especially for retail investors. https://www.mas.gov.sg/publications/consultations/2019/consultation-paper-on-proposed-regulatory-approach-for-derivatives-contracts-on-payment-tokens

The Libra Association added 3 new members to its ranks; Singapore government-owned investment giant Temasek and U.S.-based venture capital firms Slow Ventures and Paradigm.

EY failed for more than three years to request crucial account information from a Singapore bank where Wirecard claimed it had up to €1bn in cash - a routine audit procedure that could have uncovered the vast fraud at the German payments group. EY said that there were "clear indications that this was an elaborate and sophisticated fraud, involving multiple parties around the world in different institutions, with a deliberate aim of deception". The company argued that "even the most robust audit procedures may not uncover this kind of fraud".

HSBC has been working with the Singapore Exchange (SGX) and investors Temasek Holdings to explore the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT) in the country's bond market. The partnership has just successfully simulated a fully digitalised bond issuance on SGX's DLT-enabled platform. The trial operated in parallel to a traditional SGD400 million ($290 million) issuance on the SGX - and a follow-on SGD100 million reopening of the same issue - by Olam International, a food and agri-business company.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore opened up direct access to the banking system's retail payments infrastructure to eligible non-bank financial institutions (NFIs) from February 2021. NFIs that are licenced as major payment institutions under the Payment Services Act will be allowed to connect directly to Fast and Secure Transfers (FAST) and PayNow. This will enable users of NFI e-wallets to make real-time funds transfers between bank accounts and e-wallets as well as across different e-wallets. Currently, most e-wallets require the use of debit or credit cards to top-up funds, and funds transfers between e-wallets are not possible.

95% of trades in the crypto derivatives market happen across futures based on 3 main crypto currencies: BTC, ETH and EOS. At the same time, the top 6 exchanges currently take approximately 83% of all derivatives trading volume. This dominance by large exchanges is however increasingly challenged by new market entrants that specialise on new products such as options and derivatives on alternative crypto currencies. Unlike in traditional finance, where most volumes are concentrated in Western economies, crypto derivatives are overwhelmingly traded on exchanges based in Asia. Singapore especially has been chosen by many companies as its operational base due to its reputation in the financial industry and its openness for innovation by regulatory bodies.

Singapore's DBS is launching a digital currency exchange allowing both institutional and retail customers to trade crypto-assets against multiple fiat currencies. The bank updated its website showing the upcoming crypto exchange services but later took the page down. The cached version of the now-deleted webpage is still available. Dubbed DBS Digital Exchange, the crypto trading platform is planning to list four top cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, Ether, Ripple, and Bitcoin Cash, against multiple fiats, including the Singapore dollar, US dollar, Hong Kong dollar, and Japanese yen.

Cryptocurrency investors face a tricky and fast-changing tax landscape worldwide with sparse guidance in many areas, according to a new report from PwC. The report also contains the new PwC Crypto Tax Index, which ranks jurisdictions based on how comprehensive their guidance is for holders. Liechtenstein came out on top this year, with Malta, Australia, Switzerland, Singapore and Hong Kong rounding out the highest rankings. Still, very few jurisdictions have issued guidance on topics like crypto borrowing and lending, DeFi, non-fungible tokens, tokenized assets and staking income. https://www.pwchk.com/en/research-and-insights/fintech/pwc-annual-global-crypto-tax-report-2020.pdf

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has launched a S$35 million Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) for the financial services sector to help smaller financial institutions adopt digital solutions for more streamlined data reporting to MAS. The grant is currently applicable to banks and will be subsequently expanded to include insurers and capital market intermediaries. The PSG provides funding support for financial institutions with no more than 200 employees, to adopt regulatory reporting solutions from pre-approved managed service providers.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub announced Project Ellipse, a proof of concept (POC) to explore how supervision could become insights-based and data-driven using an integrated regulatory data and analytics platform. If implemented, regulatory authorities, as the ultimate end users of the platform, would be able to digitally extract, query and analyse a large quantity of data from diverse sources. These data could then be relevant to current events in real time and visible via dashboards, informing them of early supervisory actions that may need to be taken. In Phase 1, partnering with the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Bank of England and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, the concept of cross-border digital regulatory reporting, using a machine executable data model, will be explored.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced three enhancements to its FinTech Regulatory Sandbox framework to further catalyze financial innovation and FinTech adoption. Eligibility criteria will be expanded beyond first movers to include early adopters of technology innovation, the application process for financial grants will be streamlined, and there will be a "Deal Fridays" to help sandbox companies access the external investor community, to benefit from the network, mentorship, and funding.

Bank Negara Malaysia and Payments Network Malaysia have joined the BIS Innovation Hub's Project Nexus on a proof-of-concept to improve the cost and speed of cross-border payments. It will explore the feasibility of linking the real-time payment systems in Malaysia, Singapore and the euro area. This will enable customers to send and receive cross-border payments instantly and securely. The results, expected to be published by end-2022, will inform future development of a global network of real-time payment systems to enable fast and seamless cross-border payments.

"MAS and The Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) jointly announced that the consortium which they are leading had successfully developed software prototype of three different models for decentralised inter-bank payment and settlements with liquidity savings mechanisms. This report focus on the experiment done to solve the key challenges identified around the need for transactional privacy, and deterministic finality , and most critically, the ability to perform multilateral netting capabilities in a decentralised manner while preserving transactional privacy"

"MAS and Singapore Exchange (SGX) announced that it is collaborating to develop Delivery versus Payment (DvP) capabilities for settlement of tokenised assets across different blockchain platform. This will allow financial institutions and corporate investors to carry out simultaneous exchange and final settlement of tokenised digital currencies and securities assets, improving operational efficiency and reducing settlement risks. Three companies, Anquan, Deloitte and Nasdaq were appointed as technology partners for this project. They will leverage the open-source software developed and made publicly available in Project Ubin Phase 2."

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced the results of the Global CBDC Challenge. The Challenge was aimed at identifying and developing retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) solutions that increase payment efficiencies, improve financial inclusion and support the broader digitalization drive in the economy.

The Banco Central de Reserva del Perú is reportedly working with the central banks of India, Singapore and Hong Kong in developing a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

Singapore-based Conflux is piloting an offshore renminbi (RMB) stablecoin in a free trade zone (FTZ) in Shanghai, in a move to boost cross-border payments. It will run on the Conflux Network, China's only regulatory compliant public blockchain, which has also received endorsements from the Shanghai and Hunan governments. As part of China's five-year plan, Shanghai will be the central focus of global free trade and shipping in China. In July the Government of China granted Shanghai permission to explore free trade with an offshore RMB stablecoin; the only free trade zone in China to pilot trade with RMB.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published the results of its Project Mariana proof of concept that demonstrated technical feasibility of automated market-makers (AMMs) for cross-border trading and settlement of wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDCs). It borrows ideas and concepts from decentralized finance (DeFi) and leverages a public blockchain to design and test a transnational transnational FX interbank market using wCBDCs. Project Mariana is a collaboration between the BIS Innovation Hub, the Bank of France, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Swiss National Bank.

UBS Asset Management issued a pilot tokenized money market fund on the Ethereum public blockchain. It is one of the controlled pilots that are part of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Project Guardian. During the first pilot transactions, UBS Asset Management executed fund subscriptions and redemption of the tokenized fund represented as a smart contract. It plans to work with more partners and explore other investment strategies in further live pilots. UBS used its own UBS Tokenize platform.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the central banks of Australia, Korea, Malaysia and Singapore launched Project Mandala, which explores the feasibility of encoding policy and regulatory requirements into a common protocol for cross-border use cases such as foreign direct investment, borrowing and payments. It aims to ease the policy and regulatory compliance burden by automating compliance procedures, providing real-time transaction monitoring and increasing transparency and visibility around country-specific policies.