Stephanie Douse 
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has warned investors against retail investments in cryptocurrencies citing high volatility in the cryptocurrency market.
At a seminar on August 29, the managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Ravi Menon, addressed the organization’s conflicting public statements regarding cryptocurrencies.
The populace charged that regional regulators were promoting pro-crypto sentiments while implying new regulations. The remark is not wholly incorrect, according to Menon’s most recent assertion. He says that the agency should “do a better job explaining” the circumstance.
Overall, as Menon explicitly stated, “yes to digital asset innovation, no to cryptocurrency speculation,” MAS is in favor of digital assets. Regulators want the island nation to develop as a center for distributed ledger technology innovation. However, new assertions claim that the issue with cryptocurrencies is actually within them.
Menon said that this is where MAS’ “strict and drawn-out licensing process” for crypto services comes into play. It is the cause of limits on retail cryptocurrency purchases as well as cautions against them.
“Cryptocurrencies have taken a life of their own outside of the distributed ledger – and this is the source of the crypto world’s problems.”
Regulators point to the cryptocurrency market’s excessive volatility as the reason why it cannot be used as a medium of exchange or a store of value. According to MAS, there is no correlation between the cost of the aforementioned currencies and their “underlying economic value associated with their use on the distributed ledger.”
These remarks follow a number of recent moves on digital currencies by regional Singaporean authorities. Prior to making any final conclusions, MAS emailed questionnaires about clients’ business activity and holdings on Friday, August 26.
On June 22, regulators in Singapore gave their license for the cryptocurrency trading platform Crypto.com to launch operations there.
It was already considering restrictions on retail involvement in cryptocurrency-related operations in July.