Coinbase Enters Singapore after Gaining Licence

Coinbase has entered the Singaporean market as it has gained approval from the central bank to offer its crypto services in the city-state.

The largest crypto exchange in the United States has gained a so-called in-principle approval, which the central bank rolled out last year for crypto firms.

The approval will allow crypto exchanges such as Coinbase to offer services that individuals and institutions can use. Still, the central bank will regulate them under its Payment Services Act.

Coinbase has said that this has been a "significant milestone". It further added that the company currently has nearly 100 employees and has been building a robust presence in the Southeast Asian state. The largest volume of hires from Singapore is product engineers, according to Coinbase.

"We see Singapore as a strategic market and a global hub for Web3 innovation," said Hassan Ahmed, Coinbase's regional director for Southeast Asia.

Coinbase is among the only 17 crypto firms to receive in-principle approvals and licences from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) after an elaborate due diligence process that is still ongoing. There were about 180 crypto companies that applied for a crypto payments licence to the MAS in 2020 under a new regime.

Competitors Crypto.com and DBS Vickers - the brokerage run by Singapore's largest bank, DBS - have also established their business in Singapore besides Coinbase.

Although Singapore has become welcoming to outside digital asset services-related firms, its local crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC), began liquidation in June after it was unable to meet hundreds of millions of dollars in obligations.

Nevertheless, Singapore's positive step towards opening up to crypto firms has been attracting firms from China, India and elsewhere in the last few years, making it a major centre in Asia.

In its recent developments, Coinbase announced expanding its services in Australia to make accessing the crypto economy easier and safer, introducing three services to their Aussie clients, Blockchain.News reported.

The digital currency exchange, which first entered the Australian market in 2016, said it would be introducing a PayID feature to its Australian users. 

The announcement was disclosed in a published blog post, "First, we are introducing PayID as a way for Australians to top up their Coinbase accounts using direct Australian Dollar transfers." Said Coinbase in the announcement."

The crypto exchange's cloud protocol has also partnered with decentralized oracle network Chainlink Labs to launch an NFT floor price feed service.

The partnership will introduce the NFT lowest pricing source in the Coinbase cloud service, allowing developers to access real-time NFT prices to build applications such as NFT lending marketplaces, such as NFT indices.