There have been reports about stablecoin issuer Tether altering its terms of service (ToS) in Singapore. The change was pointed out by the co-founder and CEO of decentralised finance protocol Cake DeFi, Julian Hosp, on X (formerly Twitter).
The executive shared a screenshot of an email in a post on 25 September, which talked about the changes to Tether’s ToS. According to this, it prohibited certain customer bases from redeeming Tether, and that Cake was not able to redeem $USDT for United States dollars. In his tweet, Hosp expressed how he was unsure whether this was due to being based in Singapore.
The email noted, among other things, that Tether has restricted its onboarding standards where corporates controlled by; another entities, directors, shareholders residing in Singapore are no longer permitted to be Tether customers.
Here, Cake DeFi was informed to be “controlled by another corporation in Singapore”. Therefore, they would not be “permitted to be issued or redeemed from the platform”.
The move comes amidst Singapore’s biggest crypto money laundering scandal where assets that were seized swelled to over $2billion. Last month, police officers ran simultaneous raids across the country, arresting 10 foreigners with various passports from Cyprus, Cambodia, Dominica, China, Turkey and Vanuatu in a laundering bust.
The police claimed that these offenders were allegedly “laundering the proceeds of their overseas organised crime activities, including scams and online gambling”. The raids seized S$1billion worth of assets including bank accounts, S$23m in cash, luxury homes, cars, bags, watches and two gold bars.
Ever since then, various crypto firms have placed restrictions on customers in the country. This has acted out as a huge blow to them as many firms had flocked to Singapore for its easy regulations.
Since the pandemic, the country has attracted vast investments and private wealth too. The recent money-laundering case has been a matter of concern at the moment as Singapore is known for having low crime rates.
On the other hand, there have also been speculations about the changes in the $USDT redemption terms to be a Cake DeFi-related problem. Users pointed out that the DeFi protocol is flagged as enhanced due diligence (EDD). Therefore, the recent restriction could be a repercussion of a partnership issue between the two firms.
Tether has not commented on the matter as of press time.
