Singapore explores digital asset use cases in cooperation with JPMorgan and other banks.
Singapore has recently seen little love from the crypto industry. That may have to do with the increasingly heavy hand of Singaporean financial regulators, which has seen many a crypto exchange migrate to Dubai.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is now starting a financial pilot project dubbed "Project Guardian," which will explore use cases of asset tokenization and decentralized finance. Singaporean financial authorities plan to create a permissioned liquidity pool with tokenized bonds and deposits in cooperation with JPMorgan, DBS, and Marketnode.
“Through practical experimentation with the financial industry and the broader ecosystem, we seek to sharpen our understanding in this rapidly transforming digital assets ecosystem. The learnings from Project Guardian will serve to inform policy markets on the regulatory guardrails that are needed to harness the benefits of DeFi, while mitigating its risks.”
Both DBS and JPMorgan have experience building digital assets with blockchain tech, having both used tokenization for liquidity offerings beforehand.
Whether the push is a reaction to the recent slip from grace in the eyes of the crypto industry is unknown. However, it points to the fact that Singapore is still working on positioning itself as a future financial hub for digital assets.