Brad Garlinghouse, chief executive officer of Ripple, speaks in the course of the CoinDesk 2022 Consensus Festival in Austin, Texas, US, on Saturday, June 11, 2022.
Jordan Vonderhaar | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Blockchain company Ripple said Thursday it received in-principle regulatory approval to operate in Singapore, in a rare moment of excellent news for the cryptocurrency industry globally because it faces tightening policy back home in the US.
Ripple said that it was granted in-principle approval of a Major Payment Institution Licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the country’s central bank.
The license will allow Ripple to supply regulated digital payment token services and expand the cross-border transfers of XRP, a cryptocurrency the corporate is closely related to, amongst its customers, that are banks and financial institutions.
XRP was trading at around 50 cents late Wednesday evening.
Ripple, a San Francisco-based fintech company, is generally known for XRP in addition to an interbank messaging services based on blockchain, the distributed ledger technology that underpins many cryptocurrencies.
The corporate’s on-demand liquidity service uses XRP as a sort of “bridge” between currencies, which it says allows payment providers and banks to process cross-border transactions much faster than they might over legacy payment rails.
But Ripple also operates a blockchain-based international messaging system called RippleNet to facilitate massive transfers of funds between banks and other financial institutions, much like the worldwide interbank messaging system SWIFT.
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Ripple, co-founder Christian Larsen and CEO Brad Garlinghouse with conducting an illegal securities offering that raised greater than $1.3 billion through sales of XRP.
Ripple denies the SEC allegations, contending that XRP is a currency fairly than a security that will be subject to strict rules.
Singapore is one in every of the biggest currency corridors from which Ripple sends money across borders using XRP, the corporate said in a press release.
A majority of Ripple’s global on-demand liquidity transactions flow through Singapore, which serves as the corporate’s regional Asia-Pacific headquarters, Ripple said.
Ripple has doubled its headcount in Singapore over the past yr across key functions including business development, compliance, and finance, and plans to proceed increasing its presence there.
MAS, the Singaporean financial regulator, was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
The central bank was previously within the news for blasting Three Arrows Capital, the disgraced crypto hedge fund that imploded after betting billions on failed stablecoin terraUSD, for providing misleading information concerning its relocation to the British Virgin Islands in 2021.
The Asian megacity has gained a popularity through the years for being a more financial technology and crypto-friendly jurisdiction, opening its doors to numerous major corporations including domestic banking giant DBS, British fintech firm Revolut, and Singapore-based crypto exchange Crypto.com.
Garlinghouse is attributable to speak on the Point Zero Forum in Zurich, Switzerland, next Wednesday to “discuss the resurgence of innovation in digital assets through investment and thoughtful regulation,” the corporate said.
It comes on the heels of Ripple’s $250 million purchase of Metaco, a crypto custody services firm, to expand its reach within the Swiss market and diversify away from its home within the U.S. Recently, Ripple’s Garlinghouse said the firm can have spent greater than $200 million in legal fees by the point its legal battle with the SEC is wrapped up.
