Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse speaks at the CoinDesk 2022 Consensus Festival in Austin, Texas, US, on Saturday, June 11, 2022.
Jordan Vonderhaar | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Blockchain company Ripple said on Thursday it has received regulatory approval in principle to operate in Singapore, in a rare moment of good news for the cryptocurrency industry worldwide as it faces a policy tightening at home in the United States .
Ripple said it had received approval in principle from a Major Payment Institution License from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the country’s central bank.
The license allows Ripple to offer regulated digital token products and services and expand cross-border transfers of XRP, a cryptocurrency with which the company is closely associated, among its customers, including banks and financial institutions.
XRP was trading around 50 cents on Wednesday night.
Ripple, a San Francisco-based fintech company, is best known for XRP and interbank messaging services based on blockchain, the distributed ledger technology that underpins many cryptocurrencies.
The company’s on-demand liquidity service uses XRP as a sort of “bridge” between currencies, enabling payment providers and banks to process cross-border transactions much faster than through legacy payment rails.
But Ripple also operates a blockchain-based international messaging system called RippleNet to facilitate massive money transfers between banks and other financial institutions, similar to the global 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 more than $1.3 billion from the sale of XRP.
Ripple denies the SEC’s allegations, claiming that XRP is a currency rather than a security that would be subject to strict regulations.
Singapore is one of the largest currency corridors from which Ripple sends money across borders using XRP, the company said in a press release.
A majority of Ripple’s global on-demand liquidity transactions pass through Singapore, which serves as the company’s Asia-Pacific regional headquarters, Ripple said.
Ripple has doubled its workforce in Singapore over the past year for key functions including business development, compliance and finance, and plans to further expand its presence there.
MAS, the Singapore financial regulator, was not immediately available for comment when reached out to CNBC.
The central bank was previously in the news for blasting Three Arrows Capital, the disgraced crypto hedge fund that imploded after betting billions on the failed stablecoin terraUSD, for providing misleading information about its move to the British Virgin Islands in 2021.
The Asian megacity has built a reputation over the years as a more financial technology and crypto-friendly jurisdiction, opening its doors to a number of major companies, including domestic banking giant DBS, British fintech company Revolut, and Singapore-based established crypto exchange Crypto. com.
Garlinghouse will speak at the Point Zero Forum in Zurich, Switzerland this Wednesday to “discuss the resurgence of innovation in digital assets through investment and thoughtful regulation,” the company said.
It comes on the heels of Ripple’s $250 million purchase of Metaco, a crypto custody services company, to expand and diversify its reach in the Swiss market beyond its US home. Recently, Ripple’s Garlinghouse said the company will have spent more than $200 million in legal fees by the time its legal battle with the SEC is concluded.
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