SINGAPORE users accounted for the second-largest share of web traffic to FTX.com, accounting for about 5 per cent of traffic share.
This means that an average of 241,675 unique users were visiting the beleagured crypto exchange each month, figures from crypto data aggregator CoinGecko has shown.
South Korea saw the highest traffic share of 6.1 per cent, representing 297,229 unique users on average visiting FTX.com monthly, across desktop and mobile web.
Japan placed third, accounting for 4.6 per cent of web traffic to the Bahamas-based exchange, or 223,513 unique users each month.
Billions in crypto investors’ funds were lost in a matter of days early this month, as FTX collapsed after a crippling liquidity crunch rendered the exchange insolvent.
The shuttering of FTX’s largest competitor, Binance, in Singapore back in December 2021 saw Binance users in Singapore switching to FTX. This may explain why Singapore ranks high on the list of countries affected by FTX’s stunning implosion, CoinGecko said.
CoinGecko’s study looked at monthly unique visitors and traffic share by country on FTX.com via desktop and mobile devices from January to October 2022, based on data from web analytics platform SimilarWeb.
Other Asian countries accounting for the highest volume of FTX users include Taiwan, India, Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia.
FTX’s other marks of credibility include it being backed by Singapore’s state-owned investor Temasek, which has since written down its S$275-million investment in the exchange. Japanese investment giant, SoftBank, had also invested US$100 million in FTX earlier this year.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore said on Monday (Nov 21) that while both Binance and FTX were not licensed in Singapore, Binance had been actively soliciting users in Singapore, an act found to be a “possible contravention” of the Payment Services Act. The regulator first placed Binance on the Investor Alert List in September last year.
FTX, on the other hand, was not placed on the alert list as there was no evidence of the company soliciting users in Singapore and it did not offer trades in Singapore dollars.
However, Singapore users were still able to access online FTX services, and the regulator said it was not possible to ringfence the assets that Singapore investors chose to put up with FTX, nor ensure that the company backed them with reserves, as FTX is unlicensed.
Meanwhile, a survey by OCBC published on Tuesday suggests that about two in five young Singaporeans in their 20s are still looking to invest in cryptocurrencies in the next 12 months, despite the recent crash.
18 per cent of those in their 20s and 14 per cent of those in their 30s invest in crypto, according to the bank’s fourth Financial Wellness Index, which polled 2,182 working adults in Singapore between ages 21 and 65 in August.
Young Singaporeans are keener on crypto as they aspire to build their wealth fast, despite the fact that many have been burned by the volatile asset class. Crypto investors in their 20s who made losses lost 40 per cent on average from such investments, according to the study.
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