Singapore's New Crypto Rules Explained: Why MAS is Forcing Digital Token Providers to Get Licensed

The MAS is forcing many Singapore-based Digital Token Service Providers (DTSPs) to get a license by June 30th or cease serving a wide range of clients . And while both the news coverage of the announcement and policy statement are accessible this column is going to dig a bit further in to what is happening here. An additional short statement released by the MAS is both accessible and remarkably clear.

Some of this is speculation. But – and this is public record – the author of this column also submitted feedback to the MAS' original request for comment. And that feedback is largely aligned with the rules MAS promulgated a few days ago. While this certainly does not mean those comments had a strong influence on policy it is suggestive that our thinking is reasonably well aligned with policymakers.

So here we are going to outline what we think a few of the more impactful policy announcements mean. And what the announcements made so far tell us about announcements that are likely to come soon. It's also worth reflecting a bit on some of the more alarmist reactions within web3 to these announcements.

As with many other example a lack of "clarity" is not the problem here – it's that too many industry participants simply refused to see what was in front of them all along.

But before all that it is important to note that we do not have an opinion on how many weeks DTSPs need to prepare for changes. Or what the correct size of paid-up capital should be for a money transfer business. Or any view on what staffing levels or geographic positioning of executives should be beyond "whatever the company feels is best so long as it is legal." We are not going to discuss these technical – but still very important! – questions here because, frankly, we have little to no experience managing those sorts of regimes. We've been subject to, and worked inside, a lot of compliance regimes. But we can't speak intelligently about the travel habits of William Santiago many of the technical details required to construct them.