The central bank of Singapore has issued warnings over what it terms as “fabricated comments” on crypto by two websites about their chairman who also happens t be deputy prime minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam. The two websites posted this fabricated news yesterday which has caused an uproar within the institution. These two websites identified as “Gulfweed club” and “Positive bath hour” are known to post fabricated stories on various topics. The story on the central bank’s chairman claimed that he was behind a state-sponsored I billion dollar investment in bitcoin (BTC) as well as a hi-tech digital project meant for the people of Singapore.
These bold stories that went viral caught the eye of the central bank causing a furor that would lead to the two websites seemingly taking down the stories. One of the articles’s from the site Gulf weed crab had the headline, “Tharman Shanmugaratnam invests 1 billion dollars for all Singapore residents” while the article from the other site known as “positive bath hour” featured a headline that contained false information about the chairman investing heavily on a high-tech digital investment for the people of Singapore.
Chiming in on the issue, the monetary authority of Singapore (MAS) sought to distance itself from utterances falsely attributed to shanmugaratnam reiterating that the content put out by the fake news websites was fake and misleading. The body released a statement stating that quote “the website’s article on bitcoins is highly deceptive and misleading”. The website referred to here was Gulf weed crab. The body further stated that the statements attributed to the chairman and deputy prime minister were false apart from his observation that crypto trading volumes were quite low in Singapore.
On top of the fake news articles put out by the websites, they had also requested readers with payment information in order to send funds and sign up for a bitcoin account. This was no doubt intended to defraud readers who would unsuspectingly send funds to them. A second warning from the monetary authority of Singapore came in the form of a recommendation that all cases of suspicion of fraudulent investments as well as other suspected cases of unlawful activity be immediately reported to the country’s authorities. The authorities in this instance being the police force in order for them to investigate and arrest the situation before serious damage is done.
The country of Singapore has continued to employ a warm yet cautious approach towards the adoption of cryptocurrency with the monetary authority of Singapore as well as senior politicians in the country confirming that they were closely monitoring the crypto space. Stricter regulations would be put in place if the parties were to deem the regulations necessary.
