In This Newsletter
Singapore Fintech Festival
Bipartisan Crypto Legislation
The Architecture of the Metaverse
MEA Summit 2022
Singapore Fintech Festival
Milken Institute Asia Center hosted the third in its series of roundtables on green financing with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Elevandi, and Darian McBain, PhD, at the Singapore Fintech Festival. This and previous sessions brought together leading stakeholders from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to discuss how they can partner to leverage technologies to accelerate the path to green financing. Stay tuned for write-ups from the session, and, in the meantime, have a read from the previous roundtable in Zurich.
Senior Director Nicole Valentine closed out the last day of the Singapore FinTech Festival on the panel Financial Education & Literacy: The SME & Consumer View. Valentine spoke alongside Lawrence Loh of United Overseas Bank, Adeolu Bajomo of FinTechNGR, Adesola Adeduntan, DVM, of FirstBank Group, Jason Pau of Ant Group, and Amol Dethe of The Economic Times. The panel provided insights on FinTech education and literacy, talent development, financial inclusion, industry impact, regulatory approaches, research and data capture, the future of finance, and addressing the digital and wealth divide.
The festival also highlighted Singapore's emerging role as a key hub of the crypto economy. The event featured Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, a new entrant to the crypto market in the city-state according to CNBC, in conversation with MAS Chief Fintech Officer Sopnendu Mohanty. Coinbase is the recipient of Singapore's 17th license to operate tokenized digital payment services. Mohanty previously commented in Crypto Potato that the MAS would be "brutal and unrelentingly hard" on bad actors in the crypto economy in response to losses retail investors incurred from fraud over the past year. The jurisdiction's laser focus on consumer protection has spawned one of the world's most rigorous licensing regimes for crypto businesses. The MAS hopes that by building a trustworthy, well-regulated crypto ecosystem, it can become a global leader in the industry, even at the risk of deterring some investment in the short term.
Singapore also flexed its decentralized finance (DeFi) muscles at the Fintech Festival. The MAS announced its first successful DeFi trades: the execution of foreign exchange and government bond transactions against liquidity pools comprising tokenized Singapore Government Securities Bonds, Japanese Government Bonds, Japanese Yen (JPY), and Singapore Dollar (SGD). These DeFi transactions are part of a pilot program in partnership with DBS Bank, JP Morgan, and SBI Digital Asset Holdings that explores potential DeFi applications in wholesale funding markets.
Bipartisan Crypto Legislation
One of the few issues expected to retain a bipartisan legislative interest after the midterm elections in the United States is the regulation of the crypto economy. In its most recent poll of likely voters, the Crypto Council for Innovation found bipartisan support for additional regulation of the industry. A poll commissioned by Grayscale Capital found a similar bipartisan interest in clearer regulation of the crypto industry among voters. After this month's dramatic collapse of FTX, legislators may face renewed urgency to build a comprehensive regulatory framework for the industry.
Capitol Hill Crypto reports that, during the lame duck period, a series of bipartisan crypto provisions are likely to pass as amendments to the defense appropriations bill. The amendments focus on curtailing crypto's use in illicit finance, money laundering, and sanctions evasion. More comprehensive legislation on stablecoin, digital commodities, and crypto exchanges is more likely to pass in the next Congress.
The Architecture of the Metaverse
According to the Deutsche Bank report Metaverse–The Next E-commerce Revolution, virtual reality ecosystems like Roblox, Microsoft's Minecraft, or VR chat have long enabled players to spend real-world dollars in the virtual world. These platforms are looking to expand beyond their roots in video gaming to build immersive online virtual realities where consumers can play, work, and socialize. McKinsey & Co estimates in its report Value Creation in the Metaverse that these online ecosystems could be worth up to $5 trillion by 2030.
This October, Meta Platforms launched a new update to its flagship Horizons Worlds metaverse. TechCrunch reports that the update follows the launch of Meta's $1,500 Quest Pro Headset, a VR tool geared toward bringing professionals into the ecosystem. Meta, despite being a relative latecomer to the VR space, has gone all in on the metaverse. Meta told The Wall Street Journal that it has a long-term strategy for the space, despite abysmal stock market performance since pivoting to the nascent industry.
Also under development are decentralized and open metaverse projects. Distributed ownership and interoperability offered by blockchain ledgers might enable these projects to better reflect the needs and preferences of the metaverse's users. These decentralized projects contrast with the walled gardens being built by some existing tech firms. Projects like Decentraland and the 6529 Museum are emblematic of this architecture.
MEA Summit 2022
November 17–18 marked the Milken Institute's 2022 Middle East and Africa (MEA) Summit in Abu Dubai. Programming featured FinTech sessions on the metaverse, regulatory sandboxes, blockchain use cases, Web3, the next FinTech unicorns, and climate finance. We were excited to feature distinguished speakers like Paris Hilton, Yoni Assia, Caroline Pham, and many more. Watch full recordings of the MEA Summit public sessions.