OKX President Hong: Singapore Trip and Future Development

On September 2, OKX President Hong published the latest blog titled "The Journey to Singapore and Our Future", with the following translation:

Today, we announced two major developments in Singapore. Both developments demonstrate our long-term commitment to building responsibly in the Lion City.

First, following the in-principle approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) for a Major Payment Institution license in February, we are "pleased to announce that we have now received MAS's approval for the MPI license, and we are honored to have the opportunity to continue contributing to the local community in a safe, transparent, and thoughtful manner. Singapore is a key market in our global strategy, and obtaining the MPI license is another milestone in our long-term commitment to Singapore.

Second, we are very pleased to appoint Gracie Lin as our new CEO for Singapore. Our belief and practice is to hire the best local leaders and empower them to help us better serve local customers. Gracie is an exceptional leader with extensive relevant experience in public policy, investment management, capital markets, and startup technology companies. We are fortunate to have her at the helm to drive market growth and investment.

We are working hard to optimize our product suite for Singapore customers in accordance with local regulations. Currently, trading and conversion transactions have been launched, and the first product upgrade after obtaining the MPI license is a seamless connection with local bank accounts, allowing Singapore customers to easily deposit and withdraw funds. Please stay tuned for further updates—our team is working diligently.

Our long-term vision in Singapore is not only reflected at the product level but also committed to driving responsible innovation by closely collaborating with regulators, partners, the broader community, and customers, becoming a key contributor to the development of the local digital asset industry. We will tailor our products to meet local customer needs while actively developing infrastructure, talent, and education, thereby contributing to the growth of the industry.

++Long-term Vision++

Our mission is to provide responsible innovation for our customers. We aim to achieve this globally through the following two parts:

1. Local Building

In recent years, our focus has been on building locally in countries with significant sustainable growth potential.

This includes hiring and empowering the best local leaders. Deepening our connection with customers, understanding, and prioritizing local needs. We provide product innovation locally and strive to be constructive contributors to the local community.

We have long believed that the power of Crypto has always come—and will always come—from grassroots communities. If we do not engage with real crypto users, we lose focus and relevance. For this reason, we have made significant investments in building strong local teams in key regions such as Europe, the Middle East, the Americas, and Asia. We take pride in the quality of local leadership over the past few years.

Gracie's appointment as CEO of Singapore is part of our commitment to deepen our global leadership team in key markets, and she will join a passionate team of OKX leaders in Europe, Australia, UAE, Bahamas, Turkey, Brazil, and Argentina. I feel very fortunate to work with such a strong and diverse leadership team.

2. Building Responsibly

Another important part of our strategy is building responsibly, a principle that guides our work. The reason is that we need to build trust with the public and provide seamless conversion between cryptocurrency and TradFi for our customers.

We are committed to investing the resources needed for innovation to benefit our customers in the long term. Therefore, our global localized leadership has been working together over the past few years to seek business opportunities worldwide in an increasingly regulated cryptocurrency environment.

Recently, another significant milestone was establishing our MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets) hub in Malta, which will enable us to provide crypto asset services to hundreds of millions of EU customers.

++Looking Ahead++

We have been in the crypto space for a decade, and while we are proud of the achievements we have made so far, we will continue to move forward. In the long run, implementing localization and building responsibly is key to driving responsible innovation for our customers.

By strengthening our presence in Singapore, we have taken an important step, and we look forward to Singapore continuing to be a key location for close collaboration with customers and partners, while driving responsible innovation and actively giving back to the community.

Looking ahead, we will continue to share more progress in Singapore and other regions in 2024 and beyond.