Singapore to regulate virtual currencies; The move will make the city-state only the second country in the world to bring in such rules, following the United States

March 18, 2014 Leave a comment

Singapore to regulate virtual currencies

Thursday, Mar 13, 2014

Reuters

SINGAPORE – Singapore’s central bank said on Thursday it plans to regulate virtual currencies to address potential money laundering or terrorism finance risks they might pose.

The move will make the city-state only the second country in the world to bring in such rules, following the United States.

Under proposals from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), intermediaries such as virtual currency exchanges or vending machines, will have to verify the identity of their customers and report any suspicious transactions to the authorities.

The market for the world’s biggest virtual currency, bitcoin, was rocked in Japan last month when Mt. Gox, once the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, ceased operations and soon after filed for bankruptcy.

However MAS is not intending to bring in any rules to deal with the safety or sound functioning of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin.

“Consumers and businesses should take note of the broader risks that dealing in virtual currencies entails and should exercise the necessary caution,” said MAS deputy managing director Ong Chong Tee.

Singapore currently has at least two bitcoin exchanges and around half a dozen bitcoin “ATMs”.

The city-state’s first bitcoin vending machine, designed by local startup Tembusu Terminals, started business on Feb. 27, just three days after Mt. Gox suspended all trading of the virtual currency.

A week later, the apparent suicide of 28 year-old Autumn Radtke, the CEO of bitcoin-related Singapore-based First Meta, made headlines around the world, sparking speculations surrounding bitcoin’s role in the American’s death.

 

Filed under Macro Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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