Singapore's stablecoin law protects a coin 254 times its own

Singapore has 34 days left to comment on the law that turns its stablecoin rules into statute. the consultation from MAS closes on 16 October. The rules cover coins pegged to the Singapore dollar and to G10 currencies, and the Singapore-dollar one is worth $13 million.

“MAS' proposed legislative amendments will give effect to a stablecoin framework that promotes responsible financial innovation.”

— Ho Hern Shin, MAS media release, 1 September 2026

Ho Hern Shin, Deputy Managing Director, Monetary Authority of Singapore

The dollar coin issued out of Singapore is worth $3.31 billion. That is 254 times the Singapore-dollar coin, and it is the reason the framework matters to anyone outside the country. Paxos issues Global Dollar from its Singapore entity and built it to the framework MAS is now writing into law.

Three years of intention, now a duty

MAS published the policy positions in August 2023 and the draft amendments 1,113 days later, as Gibson Dunn sets out. For three years the framework existed as a stated intention that no court could enforce. The obligations it now acquires, which we set out on the day the paper appeared, read as follows:

• Reserves must equal 100% of par value at all times, held in segregated trust accounts with permitted custodians.
• Issuers may pay holders no interest, return or benefit tied to holding the coin.
• Calling a coin MAS-regulated without the licence is a crime: up to S$250,000 for a company, and S$125,000 plus three years for a person.

The interest ban is the clause with the most money behind it, and it stops short of the model Singapore's biggest issuer runs. Paying a holder for holding is out. Sharing reserve income with the exchanges, wallets and payment firms that distribute the coin stays in, and the Global Dollar Network built on that split counts more than 130 institutions.

The second half of the proposal points outward. MAS would recognise foreign stablecoins whose home regulator runs a substantively equivalent regime, label them MAS-recognised rather than MAS-regulated, and require global reserves at 100% of par across every issuing entity. Tether at $183.5 billion and USDC at $74.3 billion are the coins that clause is written around, and neither is supervised from Singapore.

What is still unpriced

The licence queue says the same thing. Gemini waited 23 months for a Major Payment Institution licence and became the thirty-eighth holder, which shows both the regulator's pace and the number of firms willing to wait for it. Singapore stablecoin law is one piece of a wider regime, and the rest of it sits on our country page.

The part issuers will price is still open. The redemption deadline, the minimum share of reserves held in cash or deposits, the capital floor and any cap on issuance all sit in subsidiary legislation that has not been consulted on yet. MAS is weighing a cash floor somewhere between 5% and 60%, a range wide enough to change an issuer's revenue by an order of magnitude.

Singapore has decided to give its stablecoin rules teeth, aim them at dollar coins issued from its own soil, and open a door to foreign ones it can only supervise at second hand. The numbers that decide who can afford the licence come later.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.