MAS Unveils Vision for Seamless Digital Asset Transactions in Singapore

Singapore’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), is focusing on ensuring seamless financial transactions across diverse digital asset networks.

Speaking at the Singapore Fintech Festival, Ravi Menon, the managing director of MAS, emphasized the critical features of digital assets, particularly tokenization, which allows the exchange of financial assets without intermediaries and enables fractionalization. Menon highlighted the need for interoperability among various digital asset networks, acknowledging the current proliferation due to different motivations and regulatory requirements. He outlined MAS’s strategy, including Project Guardian, aimed at tokenizing different asset classes with specific outcomes and involving international collaboration with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other regulators.

Additionally, Menon discussed the landscape of digital money, evaluating privately issued cryptocurrencies, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), tokenized bank liabilities, and stablecoins, while expressing concerns about the poor performance of cryptocurrencies and endorsing well-regulated stablecoins. MAS has granted in-principle approval to three stablecoin issuers: Straitsx SGD Issuance, Straitsx USD Issuance, and Paxos Digital Singapore.

Clever Robot News Desk 22^nd November 2023