Singapore Government-Owned Firm’s Subsidiary Invests in Binance

Vertex Ventures, a subsidiary of Singapore government-owned investment company Temasek Holdings, is investing in Binance, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, to aid the latter’s Singapore expansion.

Vertex Ventures, which administers $223 billion in assets, was established in 2015 as an international network of operator investors managing portfolios in the United States, China, Israel, India and Southeast Asia.

The company concentrates on early-stage ventures and currently manages around $2.5 billion. The funding is a joint attempt of Vertex Ventures China and Vertex Ventures South East Asia and India and intends to assist Binance create a crypto currency fiat exchange in Singapore, in addition to other crypto-fiat services throughout South Asia. Binance initially stated that it would establish a crypto-fiat exchange in Singapore in September.

Wei Zhou, CFO at Binance, told the following regarding Binance’ plans to enter into the Southeast Asian market

“look[s] forward to building up the blockchain ecosystem and working with all stakeholders in Singapore to support continued innovation in the local fintech space.”

In Singapore, Binance will comply with Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) rules.

Earlier this month, Binance unveiled its fiat-to-crypto exchange in Uganda. At that time, Wei opined that the first fiat-to-crypto exchange in the country will assist in maintaining continuous economic stability in Africa. He also revealed company’s intentions to bring “more innovations to the region.”

This month, Binance has also joined hands with Crypto Compliance provider and research company Chainalysis to enhance the discovery of dubious transactions. Chainalysis will supposedly simplify the handling of KYC and AML compliance programs by means of real – time monitoring to track the provenance of every trade executed on Binance’s platform.