Last week Spain’s market regulator criticised footballer Andrés Iniesta over a social media post promoting Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange.
Singapore, a free-trading port and financial hub, has been more open to the technology than regional rivals including Hong Kong and Tokyo.
Popular cryptocurrency companies Binance, Ripple and Coinbase have applied for licences and been granted exemptions by the Monetary Authority of Singapore to serve retail and institutional clients.
Bitget had also received an exemption, but this was removed in July, according to a person familiar with the matter. Bitget and the MAS declined to provide details on the reasons for Bitget’s exemption removal.
However, Bitget’s services were still available in Singapore until late November when it was promoting Army Coin and its website continued to claim it had MAS approval.
The company has since removed the MAS logo from its site after being contacted by the Financial Times and has blocked Singapore users from accessing its app and website. Bitget still claims to have licences in the US, Canada and Australia.
Bitget did not respond to queries from the FT on why its services had been still available to Singaporean residents even after having its exemption taken away.
Meanwhile, Army Coin has also since been listed on CoinTiger, another cryptocurrency exchange with ties to Singapore. CoinTiger’s announcement said the coin “exists for the good of BTS”, and will “truly support them financially”.
Hybe issued a statement in October that said the coin had “no connection” with BTS and warned that it would also “take legal action” but declined to comment on the Army Coin creator.
The coin remains available for users to buy and sell in other jurisdictions on Bitget, including in South Korea, although trading has been extremely volatile.
An FT analysis found the coin fluctuated by up to 78 times its value in a day, rising back and forth between $US1000 and $US78,000 within minutes.
The difficulty for Singapore regulators, as with any jurisdiction, was that they could not stop people from buying risky assets, said Varun Mittal, author of Singapore: The Fintech Nation.
“If someone is hell-bent on spending money on these exchanges, regulators cannot stop them,” said Mr Mittal.
Crypto companies have stepped up their advertising efforts to capitalise on growing investor interest. Singapore-based cryptocurrency platform Crypto.com paid more than $US700 million ($999 million) in November for naming rights to the Staples Centre, a Los Angeles stadium.
Bitget announced its sponsorship deal with Juventus in September. The exchange’s name and logo appears on the team’s black-and-white shirts as the club’s first “sleeve sponsor”.
Financial Times