Capital markets blockchain platform iSTOX has graduated from Singapore’s regulatory sandbox and been approved as a recognized market operator and capital markets services licensee.
Singapore’s The Business Times confirmed on February 3 that the platform, developed by blockchain infrastructure firm ICHX Tech, is now fully operational and licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the city-state’s central bank, Cointelegraph reported.
The MAS, which also serves as Singapore’s financial regulator, launched its FinTech Regulatory Sandbox to encourage local projects to pursue innovative financial products and services within a secure, efficient and low-regulatory pressure environment.
“While capital markets have seen many changes and innovations over the years, the underlying core infrastructure hasn’t really changed since the advent of electronic trading decades ago,” chief operating officer Darius Liu said, according to The Straits Times..
The MAS sandbox lets financial institutions and fintech start-ups experiment with new financial products or services within a well-defined environment that also includes safeguards to contain the consequences of failure.
“This has again demonstrated that proportional regulations through sandbox experimentation can foster innovation and bring new benefits to consumers and the financial industry,” said MAS chief fintech officer Sopnendu Mohanty.
ICHX Tech’s iSTOX will offer issuance, settlement, custody and secondary trading for digitized securities – heralding a new, fully-regulated arrival on the blockchain scene in a major global financial center.
Now that it has graduated from MAS’ sandbox, restrictions on iSTOX will be lifted, including limitations on the size of the issuances it can host and the number of investors that can draw in. The firm is reported to have confirmed its graduation during a press conference Monday.
As reported, MAS recently proposed bringing crypto derivatives trading under its purview. Its proposal would make the trading of derivatives based on underlying assets like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) subject to the city-state’s Securities and Futures Act.
Together with state investment firm Temasek Holdings and the United States’ largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, MAS also created a prototype multi-currency blockchain-based payments network at the end of last year.