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Android Authority reported on October 27 that it discovered a developing Overseas QR payments setting in Google Wallet version 26.42.1003171897. The "Learn more" link within this setting points to the Google Wallet support page, where this feature is referred to as Traveler QR.Google explains on the support page that relevant options will automatically appear when the phone detects that the user is in a covered area. Currently, the only explicitly named destination on the page is Singapore, corresponding to the Alipay+ partner network. Android Authority notes that Alipay is primarily used in China, while Alipay+ connects various payment systems across Southeast Asia. This discovery comes from the disassembly of the application installation package, and the features that appear in the disassembly may not necessarily make it into the public version. There has also been no official announcement regarding the release of Traveler QR yet.

The Singapore Police Force issued a warning on Wednesday, stating that since September 10, they have received at least two reports involving tampered Ledger hardware wallets, resulting in a total loss of approximately 3.5 million Singapore dollars, equivalent to about 2.7 million US dollars. Preliminary investigations found malicious hardware components in Ledger wallets purchased from certain retail stores in Singapore.The incident only came to public attention on October 9, involving devices sold through authorized dealers CryptoBilis in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Subsequently, former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès stated that a Ledger Flex purchased at Singapore airport contained a spy implant. Another user reported acquiring a tampered device from local IT retailer Challenger, and later received a new device sent by Ledger.On October 13, Ledger requested retailers in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Hong Kong to suspend sales of their devices pending the completion of the investigation. The Singapore police stated they are in contact with Ledger, which is reviewing the affected cases, and the police investigation is ongoing.

According to market news, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated that regardless of whether Congress takes action, the U.S. Treasury will push to bridge the regulatory gap between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regarding cryptocurrency.

Initia officially stated that, with the support of the Initia Foundation, the 1:1 asset backing of the affected assets in the security incident on October 23 will be fully restored when the chain resumes operation.The Initia Foundation has approved funding to cover the reserve shortfall of Noble USDC, WETH, and AUSD0 used as collateral for iUSD, involving up to 1.08 million USDC, 105 ETH, and 1.4 million AUSD0 respectively. The specific amounts still need to be verified and receive final transfer approval.

After a test transfer was completed, the reserve gap of the Liquid Network has narrowed to about 600 BTC. Samson Mow, a member of the Liquid Federation, stated that the remaining funds are expected to be in place within the next few days, but the recovery plan still requires full reserve backing before direct redemptions can be restarted.Previously, the Liquid Network experienced a security incident where attackers exploited a rangeproof verification cache vulnerability in Elements to issue approximately 4,000 L-BTC without providing sufficient Bitcoin backing, and transferred out about 4,000 BTC through the redemption channel of Federation member SideSwap. After the incident, the attackers have returned 3,400 BTC, with approximately 602 BTC still being recovered.Blockstream suspended the Liquid bridge nodes after the incident and notified exchanges to pause L-BTC deposits and withdrawals, subsequently deploying an emergency patch and releasing Elements v23.3.4 to fix the related vulnerabilities. Currently, trading on the Liquid Network has resumed, but direct redemptions remain suspended, with a reserve coverage ratio of about 85.8%.

Nick Timiraos, the "Fed's Mouthpiece," stated that when Waller took office, it coincided with the Federal Reserve's shift to a tightening cycle; historically, such periods are often when "forward guidance" plays a key role. It is commonly believed that "forward guidance" originated during the ultra-loose monetary policy period of 2008-2009 and afterward, as the Federal Reserve heavily relied on this tool when interest rates hit the "zero lower bound." However, in reality, the history of forward guidance can be traced back to 1999.At that time, Federal Reserve officials wanted to retract the rate cuts made in 1998 while also avoiding the miscommunication that caught the market off guard during the rate hikes of 1994. Therefore, in May 1999, the Federal Reserve attempted for the first time to issue a policy statement after a meeting where interest rates were kept unchanged.Previously, the Federal Reserve would only release statements after meetings where interest rates were adjusted. Six weeks later, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates. The minutes from the May 1999 meeting indicated that officials were already aware of the high likelihood of a rate hike and hoped to guide market expectations accordingly. Officials did not want the market to misinterpret their policy intentions.

Asia Gulf Holdings (AGH), the parent company of Singapore Gulf Bank (SGB), announced the appointment of Martin Gilbert, Chairman of Revolut Group, and Maliki Osman, former Minister in the Prime Minister's Office and Second Minister for Foreign Affairs of Singapore, to the Global Advisory Council. The two will provide advice on global investment strategies and geopolitical affairs, respectively.Maliki Osman will also advise on government relations and regional cooperation, while Martin Gilbert will focus on global investment strategies, asset management, and investment opportunities in Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. The council is chaired by Amy Lee, with former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Randal Quarles serving as vice chairman. This appointment was announced on October 26, and Maliki Osman will exit politics in May 2025.

The Central Bank of Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand joined the Singapore-led BLOOM initiative on Friday as members of the policymakers. BLOOM stands for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency, and is a public-private partnership initiative aimed at helping financial institutions utilize stablecoins and tokenized deposits for cross-border payments. According to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the initiative aims to reduce costs and help institutions bring services to market faster by decreasing the need for financial institutions to establish arrangements with each counterparty or market individually.The Monetary Authority of Singapore launched BLOOM in October 2025, building on Project Orchid, which was initiated in 2021 to explore the application of a digital Singapore dollar. BLOOM's work also covers corporate cash management, trade financing, and payments executed by AI agents within preset limits, with participants including Airwallex, Mastercard, Ripple, Visa, and the World Bank Group. Additionally, the Central Bank of Malaysia announced in February that three initiatives would test the ringgit stablecoin and tokenized deposits for domestic and cross-border wholesale payments in 2026.

According to South Korean media Digital Asset, the Second Division of the Seoul Administrative Court held its first hearing on October 22 regarding the administrative lawsuit between Bithumb and the Financial Intelligence Unit of Korea (FIU). The FIU determined that between August 28, 2022, and April 3, 2025, Bithumb conducted 45,772 transactions with 18 unreported cryptocurrency operators, and based on this, imposed sanctions, including a partial suspension that restricts new customers from transferring cryptocurrency assets externally for six months.Bithumb stated in court that transactions of 1 million won or more are subject to the "travel rule," and unreported operators have been excluded from the list of optional exchanges, thus the number of violations for this amount range is zero. Transactions below 1 million won were not subject to the travel rule at that time, and the platform had no legal basis to require customers to provide information about the receiving exchange, nor did the regulatory authorities specify a blocking method. Bithumb also mentioned that after integrating the Chainalysis API, only about 2% of the addresses that could not be confirmed were later identified as unreported operators designated by the FIU. If all were blocked, the remaining 98% of normal transactions would be affected, and the platform could also face user claims.Bithumb also believes that the six-month sanction is excessive, effectively equivalent to prohibiting the platform from acquiring new customers. The company also questioned the FIU's criteria for identifying overseas operators and the reasonableness of the basis for the sanctions.

Elon Musk stated that they are increasing the production of the integrated battery system Megapacks as much as possible.

According to the Straits Times, Edward Robinson, Chief Economist of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, stated at the Beijing Financial Street Forum on October 20 that once artificial intelligence leads to widespread productivity improvements, central banks may relax monetary policy. However, currently, the AI investment boom is driving demand, and policies should maintain appropriate restrictions. He pointed out that AI-related investments are driving economic growth, but the technology has not yet brought significant productivity improvements to the broader economy, and he called for a gradual, data-driven approach.The Monetary Authority tightened monetary policy in April and July 2026 due to rising inflation risks, and maintained the policy unchanged in October. An October 14 statement warned that if the AI boom generates broader economic spillovers and raises unit labor costs, domestic inflation may remain high. Robinson noted that AI-driven electronic products accounted for over 70% of this year's export growth in Asia, but the growth of industries producing AI-related technologies mainly stems from increased investment and more intensive use of existing resources, rather than efficiency improvements. He cited OECD estimates stating that if sufficiently widespread and appropriately invested, AI could increase total factor productivity growth by up to 0.6 percentage points annually.

Singapore Gulf Bank (SGB) announced that personal customers can conduct two-way exchanges between USD and USDT, USDC through the mobile banking app, without the need to transfer funds to a cryptocurrency exchange.Customers can hold USDT, USDC, and other fiat currencies in the same bank account, and the service supports 24-hour exchanges from Monday to Friday. Singapore Gulf Bank was initiated by the Singapore Huangpu Group.

According to Bitcoin Magazine, the Singapore-listed company BitFuFu disclosed an addition of 15 Bitcoins, bringing the company's total Bitcoin holdings to 1,388, valued at approximately 114.2 million USD.BitFuFu is a Bitcoin mining company registered in Singapore, with business covering mining and computing power-related services, and discloses changes in Bitcoin reserves as a public company.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has revoked the major payment institution license of the currency exchange and cross-border remittance entity Sir Money Changer Pte. Ltd. (SMC) under the Payment Services Act 2019, effective from September 15, 2026. From that date, SMC is no longer allowed to provide cross-border remittance and currency exchange services.The action by MAS stems from an investigation that found SMC allowed third parties to independently operate cross-border remittance services in one of its business premises under the name of SMC and provided false or misleading information to MAS. MAS pointed out that license holders must not allow third parties to use their license to conduct financial service activities and require payment service providers to maintain effective supervision and control over their business operations.

According to news from the Anthropic official website, Anthropic announced the opening of its fifth office in the Asia-Pacific region in Singapore and signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Communications and Information of Singapore. Both parties will collaborate in areas such as AI safety, model evaluation, and responsible AI adoption.Singapore is one of the most active markets for Claude globally, with over a thousand government agencies and enterprises, including GovTech Singapore, DBS, Grab, and GIC, already deploying Claude. Among them, over 1,500 engineers at GovTech Singapore have adopted Claude Code to advance the modernization of government systems, while Grab saves approximately 40,000 hours of manpower each quarter with the help of a Claude-driven sales assistant.

According to a report from the official Coinbase blog, the Anti-Scam Centre (ASC) of the Singapore Police Force released a briefing on scams and cybercrime for the first half of 2026, showing that cryptocurrency scam losses in Singapore decreased by 43% year-on-year, from 114.9 million Singapore dollars to 65.5 million Singapore dollars.The ASC attributes this achievement in part to the actions taken by industry partners, including the shutdown of 47,500 mobile lines, 37,500 WhatsApp accounts, and 52,200 malicious websites, as well as investigations into over 2,900 money mules and scammers, resulting in approximately 470 prosecutions. The Coinbase Global Intelligence Team identified over 720 potential victims through four joint operations with the ASC, helping to intercept potential losses of over 18.9 million Singapore dollars.