Former MAS chair who called crypto ‘highly risky’ wins Singapore’s presidential race

Tharman Shanmugaratnam, former chair of the Financial Authority of Singapore, has received the election for the city-state’s presidency with greater than 70% of the vote.

In accordance with a number of experiences from Sept. 2, Shanmugaratnam defeated presidential candidates Ng Kok Music and Tan Kin Lian to grow to be the following president of Singapore with roughly 70.4% of votes. He shall be sworn into workplace on Sept. 14 — lower than two weeks after the election.

Within the lead-up to his presidential marketing campaign, Shanmugaratnam resigned from his place in Singapore’s parliament and on the Financial Authority of Singapore (MAS), the place he served as chair from 2011 to 2023. He was additionally the nation’s finance minister from 2007 to 2015. Beneath Shanmugaratnam, Singapore’s monetary regulator witnessed the collapse of Three Arrows Capital and Terraform Labs amid the 2022 market crash.

The president-elect reportedly once called crypto assets “extremely risky” and “extremely dangerous as funding merchandise” in 2021 warnings to Singapore-based customers in his function as MAS chair. The monetary regulator granted Crypto.com an in-principle approval to function within the city-state in June 2022, in addition to exemptions for Bitstamp, Coinbase, and Gemini Belief.

Associated: Singapore to require crypto firms to put user assets into trusts by year-end

Shanmugaratnam, as president, will grow to be the pinnacle of state in Singapore, representing the nation in diplomatic features as a part of a largely ceremonial function. He shall be changing Halimah Yacob, who served as president since 2017.

Following Shanmugaratnam’s departure from MAS, the monetary regulator has announced a revised regulatory framework for stablecoins in Singapore as a part of a public session launched in 2022. In July, Singapore’s excessive courtroom ruled that cryptocurrencies might be handled as private property akin to fiat cash.

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