MAS to step up supervision of virtual assets in 'major' undertaking

THE Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is stepping up with its supervisory and surveillance moves to proactively detect unlicensed activities involving digital payment tokens, said a senior regulator on Wednesday.

It will also use real-time data gathering to boost the regulator's assessment of money laundering and terrorism financing risks for licensed entities that work with digital payment tokens - a class of virtual assets that include bitcoins - said Loo Siew Yee, assistant managing director (policy, payments and financial crime), at the MAS.

The regulator is now experimenting with both in-house and external technologies to review new data points, such as transactional information on public blockchains and other sources.