SINGAPORE – Cryptocurrency firm Blockchain.com has been granted a licence in its South-east Asian headquarters of Singapore that will allow it to expand its services to global institutional and accredited investors.
The company was granted a major payment institution licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) on Aug 1.
This comes less than a year after Blockchain.com, a pioneer of key infrastructure for the Bitcoin community, received in-principle approval from MAS, which is relatively quicker than the usual time taken in the application process.
On Tuesday, the company said: “Singapore represents a large, profitable trading hub for Blockchain.com, serving global institutional and accredited investor clients trading in over-the-counter (OTC) spot and agency execution.”
An OTC market is a decentralised one where market participants trade directly with one another without a central exchange or broker.
Spot trading refers to the buying of a cryptocurrency using fiat or other crypto assets at real-time market prices and selling it later when the price rises, while agency execution just means trades are conducted by third parties or brokers on behalf of clients.
“Over 90 per cent of the group’s institutional and accredited investors business is in Singapore,” Mr Rakesh Madamanchi, Blockchain.com’s head of institutional compliance and Singapore operations, told The Straits Times.
Mr Madamanchi, who took over the reins in early 2023, called the MAS licence an “assurance” and “game changer for us”.
For one, he expects the licence to make it easier for the company to find banking partners – an issue for crypto firms globally due to anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing risks.
In the United States, the demise of lenders Silvergate Bank, Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank and the regulatory clampdown there has worsened the problem for crypto firms.
“We are profitable already in Singapore and we’re trying to consolidate the position and expand globally, not just in Singapore,” Mr Madamanchi said, adding that his team is looking to enhance infrastructure and add custodial services to its offerings.
Currently, the Singapore arm of Blockchain.com has a team of about 30.
The company in 2022 acquired Singapore-based trading firm Altonomy, which was set up in 2018 and has offices in New York and Shenzhen.
When asked if there are plans to pursue a licence in Hong Kong given that investors have bigger risk appetites in the territory, he said the plan currently is to operate in Singapore for the region, and that the firm is not pursuing a Hong Kong licence.
Blockchain.com was founded in 2011 in Britain and says it has more than 90 million wallets created, over 40 million verified users, and facilitated over US$1 trillion (S$1.34 trillion) in crypto transactions.
It holds licences and registrations in various regions, including in the US and British Virgin Islands.
The founder and chief executive of the world’s largest exchange Binance, Mr Zhao Changpeng, was head of development at Blockchain.com in 2013 for a year.