Crypto.com doubles down on security to rebuild trust in sector
It has been aiming for higher-tier certifications as it wants to demonstrate to stakeholders that it is ‘fully committed to security’
A US$35 million hack it suffered earlier this year drove Crypto.com to double down on security. The Singapore-headquartered cryptocurrency exchange said it has been investing in compliance and security to re-establish itself in a sector undergoing a reputational crisis.
While declining to share any figures, Crypto.com’s Singapore general manager Ang Chin Tah asserted that the company is a leader among digital asset firms in its investments in security technologies.
He also pointed to the licences and certifications that the company has secured as evidence it is making progress on this front.
Crypto.com received the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s in-principle approval in June for its Major Payment Institution licence. In the following months, it secured registration approvals in places including Italy, Cyprus, Cayman Islands and France. It has also received various certifications for its security and data privacy practices.
These come after almost 500 accounts were hit by unauthorised withdrawals in January this year, as transactions were approved without two-factor authentication provided by the users.
“We take it quite personally when something like (the hack) happens, because we are in the business of trust. We work very hard in getting some of these certifications, and you would notice these things happened in the past two to three months, because we wanted to rebuild that trust, to establish ourselves,” Ang told The Business Times.
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He added that Crypto.com has been aiming for higher-tier certifications as it wants to demonstrate to stakeholders that it is “fully committed to security”.
“In Web3, there are a lot of exciting things to talk about, but I am going on about security and compliance – which may be a bit boring.
“But sometimes, in the business of trust, ‘boring’ is the right course to pursue,” he said. Web3, a recently coined term, refers to a new iteration of the Internet characterised by decentralised and open systems that run on blockchain technology.
Ang was appointed Crypto.com’s first general manager for Singapore in August this year. He spent 16 years in the public service prior to that, with leadership roles at Digital Industry Singapore and the Singapore Economic Development Board.
In addition to Ang, Crypto.com’s chief operating officer Eric Anziani, chief financial officer Rafael Melo, chief compliance officer Antonio Alvarez and chief marketing officer Steven Kalifowitz are also based in Singapore. The company, which was founded in 2016, has over 100 employees here. It serves over 50 million customers worldwide.
Singapore will serve as a sandbox for many of Crypto.com’s experiments in the Web3 space. “Whatever we want to do globally, we need to have an instance of that in Singapore, too. We intend to start working on global and local problem statements with Singapore-based players in the Web3 ecosystem,” he said.
Ang highlights “GameFi” and “SocialFi” as two innovation areas in which the company is looking to invest. “GameFi”, often known by its play-to-earn business model, involves blockchain games offering tokenised incentives to players. “SocialFi” envisions giving social media users more agency in managing and monetising their content.
When asked for his views on the oft-cited criticism of blockchain as a “solution looking for a problem”, Ang maintained that Crypto.com has incorporated the technology in building an ecosystem for trading of and payment using digital assets.
He also cited the security applications behind non-fungible tokens (NFTs), such as for health passporting and securing records, as concrete use cases of the technology.
As part of its innovation agenda, Crypto.com also wants to help build Web3 talent in Singapore. It hopes to work with partners, such as educational institutions, to run hackathons and internships for students and others in its user base.
Like several other crypto firms, it has started publishing educational pieces on its website that simplify the more esoteric topics related to crypto and blockchain.
From a regional perspective, Indonesia is one market Crypto.com is watching closely and has invested in.
The company is also keen to establish partnerships of all stripes, including with traditional financial institutions. “As digital currencies become a little bit more mainstream, and, more importantly, as the guardrails and OB (out-of-bounds) markers become more clear, it will encourage more traditional financial players and new entrants to enter,” Ang said. “Because then we will know how to operate.”
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