Coinbase has continued with its regulation-focused expansion, with the company’s latest approval coming from Singapore. The license, which is an in-principle approval as a major payments institution, will allow Coinbase to provide digital payment token products and services in the city-state, the company said. In addition, it stressed the significance of the license, saying it would allow it to introduce its whole retail, institutional, and ecosystem product line.
What has inspired Coinbase’s move into Singapore in a bear market?
To help establish Singapore as a regulated worldwide centre for the cryptocurrency industry, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has issued such permits to 17 companies. On the other side, Coinbase has been consistently investing in Singapore, and the ongoing bear market in cryptocurrencies does not appear to have had much of an impact on the company’s expansion plans.
At the end of last year, Coinbase said that Singapore would serve as a major centre for the company’s research and development. Additionally, the company’s institutional investor business in the Asia-Pacific area operates out of the country. In line with that, it currently has a workforce of about a hundred people in the country. However, in a contrarian move, the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, shut its operations in the country in late 2021. How long Coinbase will stay in the country is an open question.
Singapore has a history of being at the vanguard of the financial and technology revolution, and its citizens are known for their receptivity to new ideas. The company believes that well-considered and workable regulation is essential to its development and the realization of the potential of the current financial and technological revolution.
Over the past three years, the team running the company’s investment arm, Coinbase Ventures, has invested in more than fifteen Web3 firms based in Singapore. They’ve set up shop in the island metropolis to spearhead investment across the region.