Singapore Cements Its Role as a Crypto Hub as Banks Move Closer

This week brought risk controls from Mastercard, a revised forecast from Standard Chartered, and stricter oversight for USDC.

Caio Barbosa

Founder & CO-CEO

Forbes Under 30. One of the leading voices in Fintech & Crypto in Brazil. Writes weekly about stablecoins, payments, and the future of financial infrastructure in Latin America.

Cover image for Lumx blog article: Singapore Cements Its Role as a Crypto Hub as Banks Move Closer

After attending TOKEN2049 in Singapore, Caio Barbosa, founder and co-CEO of Lumx, noted that companies moving from Hong Kong to the city-state are doing so to be closer to the banking system, as the digital asset sector increasingly takes on fintech activities.

On the corporate front, Mastercard launched a fraud and sanctions screening service for stablecoin payments, and Standard Chartered pushed its forecast of a $2 trillion market back to 2030, citing stagnant supply and rising transaction activity.

On the regulatory and accounting front, an FASB proposal could allow U.S. companies to classify qualifying stablecoins as cash equivalents, while the European Banking Authority classified USDC as a significant e-money token under MiCA. The edition closes with the announcement that USDC can now be sent through Samsung Galaxy’s native wallet.

Lumx News

Lumx attended TOKEN2049 in Singapore, spending two days meeting with partners and investors from the region. In an interview with BP Money, Caio Barbosa said that companies previously headquartered in Hong Kong have started establishing a presence in Singapore because of the city-state’s concentration of banking institutions, a shift that mirrors the transformation of the digital asset sector into a fintech industry. This week’s data backs up that view: Chainalysis measured crypto activity in Singapore at $284 billion, up 55.4%, with the institutional share rising 94% to $60 billion, and on the 8th Standard Chartered announced custody of crypto assets, stablecoins, and tokenized assets for institutional clients in the country. Barbosa also noted that many international attendees were unaware of Brazil’s regulatory environment, including the existence of a deadline to apply for a license.

Mastercard Brings Fraud and Sanctions Screening to Stablecoin Payments

In short:

Stablecoin Security combines payment data with onchain analysis to generate a risk score before a transaction is completed.
The service targets fraud, scams, sanctions exposure, and other financial crime risks, with Borderless.xyz and Keyrails as launch partners.
Global commercial availability is expected in 2027.

Mastercard unveiled the service at Money20/20 in the United States. The added complexity compared to conventional payments comes from the fact that stablecoin funds move across multiple wallets and networks, making it harder to assess risk along the way. The product’s key technical point is when the score is generated: before the payment is completed, which is the window in which the transaction can still be held for review.

For anyone running payment infrastructure, pre-settlement screening now becomes an agenda item in conversations with partner banks, since there is now a reference vendor that compliance teams recognize.

Standard Chartered Pushes Its $2 Trillion Stablecoin Forecast to 2030

In short:

The bank had projected the milestone for 2028 and now projects 2030, after market capitalization stalled at around $309 billion this year.
Transaction activity keeps growing, with existing stablecoins changing hands more often.
The report breaks the market into four segments, each with its own competitive dynamics.

Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank’s head of digital assets research, noted that usage continues to expand despite slow supply growth. The segmentation is the most useful part of the report: USDT dominates savings in emerging markets, USDC leads payments in developed markets, USDC and USDe hold strong positions in crypto trading, and USDC also leads the much smaller market for transactions between AI agents.

The bank expects the fiercest competition in developed-market payments, where USDG, M^0, and multi-bank networks are encroaching on existing infrastructure, and sees the split of reserve yield between issuers and payment networks as the factor that could decide market share. That split determines the margin available to subsidize fees, pay interest on balances, or compensate distributors.

An Accounting Proposal Could Let Stablecoins Count as Cash on the Balance Sheet

In short:

The FASB proposal would allow U.S. companies to classify qualifying stablecoins as cash equivalents.
The condition is a direct redemption right with the issuer, so buying on an exchange doesn’t qualify.
The public comment period runs through November 19.

A report from Tempo, the Stripe-backed blockchain, examined the update proposed in August by the U.S. accounting standards board. Under current accounting practice, stablecoin balances may not be included in reported cash even when fully backed by dollars, which affects liquidity ratios and debt covenants.

The direct redemption requirement is the deciding detail. Coinbase already classifies USDC and other payment stablecoins as cash equivalents in its 2025 annual report, based on its redemption agreement with Circle. For corporate clients, the question that now matters is what contractual relationship they have with the issuer, which changes the picture of who intermediates that access.

Europe Puts USDC in MiCA’s Strictest Supervision Category

In short:

The European Banking Authority classified USDC as a significant e-money token.
The stablecoin will now be jointly supervised by the EBA and the French prudential authority.
There are 45 other e-money tokens registered under MiCA, and none of them carries this classification.

The authority announced the decision on Wednesday. USDC is the second-largest stablecoin by market cap, at $73 billion versus $184 billion for USDT, and the classification places it under joint supervision by the EBA and France’s Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution.

As Stable News reported in the previous edition, Circle had asked the European Commission to replace the requirement to hold reserves in bank deposits with a liquidity requirement. That requirement is 30% of reserves and rises to 60% for tokens classified as significant, meaning the company now operates under the strictest threshold while arguing over whether it should exist at all.

The move comes as European issuers push to launch dollar stablecoins alongside euro ones. Alexander Höptner, CEO of AllUnity, said that offering only a euro stablecoin isn’t enough for European companies making global payments.

Samsung Will Let Users Send USDC Through the Galaxy’s Native Wallet

In short:

International USDC transfers on Solana launch in the last week of October via Samsung Wallet and Samsung Pay.
The feature debuts on 82 million Galaxy devices in the United States, with built-in conversion to and from local currency.
The announcement doesn’t detail transfer costs, key custody, or Circle’s involvement.

The Solana Foundation announced the integration, with the network running behind the scenes and users interacting only with the wallet already installed on their device. Stablecoin supply on Solana grew about 20% in a year, and the network processed more than $5.25 trillion in stablecoin volume in 2026, according to the foundation.

What was left out of the announcement is what defines the product. Without information on transfer costs and key custody, it’s not yet possible to tell whether the feature is a dollar account inside the phone or a send button with conversion at both ends. Additional markets will follow the U.S. launch, subject to local regulatory requirements.

Worth Reading

A third of Americans would rather watch highlights of a show than every episode, and the easy takeaway that nobody has patience anymore doesn’t hold up against the survey itself.

The survey polled 2,500 U.S. adults. The 32% who prefer highlights rises to 43% among Gen Z, and four in ten say they would use streaming services more if they offered short clips of their own shows, a figure that reaches 53% among younger viewers. Then come the numbers that change the interpretation: 51% say clips help them discover shows worth paying for, and 65% say new episodes of shows they follow weigh on their decision to keep a subscription. Short-form content shows up as a gateway to long-form.

The survey was sponsored by Bango, a subscription bundling company, which explains the emphasis on findings about bundles. Even so, the core insight matters to any business that distributes a product: the same person looks for the shortcut and the full content at different moments.

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Story of the Week

Amanda Natividad of SparkToro spent the past few weeks building villages in a Pokémon game and came away with a prediction about the future of marketing.

In Pokopia, players rebuild the world with and for Pokémon, creating habitats, raising buildings, and decorating spaces. She describes trying to build a medieval street in one area of the map; it didn’t fit, so she changed plans midway, turned the castle structure into a restaurant, and improvised market stalls. The result turned out differently than she had imagined, and she liked it better that way. There was no deadline, no client, and no reason for any of it.

Her thesis is that “made entirely by humans” will become a premium signal. The game removes the technical barrier that would keep her from expressing a vision while leaving the creative decisions with her, a distinction that structures her argument. She cites a 2024 study that found AI-assisted writers producing stories rated as more creative and, at the same time, more similar to one another. In her view, judgment is formed by doing, making mistakes, and improvising, so automating too much of the creative process removes the opportunities to develop the discernment that later defines what’s worth automating.

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