Singapore’s central bank is moving to tighten regulations for retail cryptocurrency investors, including prohibiting them from using credit cards to buy the digital assets, in order to discourage speculation.
Cryptocurrency or digital payment token service providers will also be barred from providing financing, margin or leverage transactions, or offering incentives to retail customers, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) says in a statement on November 23. And they must limit the value of cryptocurrencies in determining a customer’s net worth.
MAS is also focusing on technology and cyber risk, and will require the service providers to “maintain high availability and recoverability of their critical systems, in line with current requirements imposed on financial institutions”.
The new measures will be implemented in phases from the middle of next year through regulations and guidelines.
MAS says this will give service providers an adequate transition period to properly implement the measures.