Coinbase CEO Says Singapore’s Retail Crypto Curbs Jar With Web3

Suvashree Ghosh and Joanna Ossinger, Bloomberg News

Brian Armstrong, chief executive officer of Coinbase Global Inc., speaks at the company's event in Bengaluru, India, on Thursday, April 7, 2022. Coinbase, the U.S. cryptocurrency exchange operator, plans to more than triple its number of employees in India this year to around 1,000, according to Armstrong. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Singapore’s desire to be a hub for the so-called web3 industry conflicts with the city-state’s proposed curbs on retail crypto trading, Coinbase Global Inc.’s Chief Executive Officer Brian Armstrong said.

“To say Singapore wants to be a web3 hub and then simultaneously say we aren’t really going to allow retail to trade” is “incompatible,” Armstrong said Friday on a panel at the Singapore FinTech Festival alongside Sopnendu Mohanty, the chief fintech officer at the island nation’s central bank.

Singapore is seeking to clamp down on retail-investor access to crypto trading to shield consumers from a volatile market that endured a $2 trillion rout over the past year. For instance, the city-state is moving toward banning leveraged retail token purchases.

Armstrong said he “would like to see Singapore embrace retail trading.” He added that both centralized crypto exchanges -- of which Coinbase is an example -- and custodians should be regulated like other financial institutions.

The nebulous term “web3” refers to a vision of a decentralized internet built around blockchains, crypto’s underlying technology. Asian economies including Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan are jostling to be at the forefront of the technology, anticipating it can aid economic expansion.

Mohanty this week said Singapore is taking a long-term view on crypto regulation and is focused on utility. “The marketplace we are predicting is that in future, in the web3 construct, the way you buy assets is going to change,” he told Bloomberg Television in an interview.

Coinbase on Thursday reported a narrower third-quarter loss as the largest US crypto exchange reigned in expenses while bracing for potentially intensifying “macro headwinds” going into next year.

(Updates with comments from the CEO in the second paragraph.)