Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong announced in a statement on September 9 that authorities are investigating seven people who are suspected of illegally buying and selling WorldCoin accounts and tokens.
Mr Yong, who is also chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), said:
“Police are investigating seven suspects for their alleged involvement in providing WorldCoin accounts and token buying and selling services, which constitutes a breach of the Payment Services Act 2019.”
Yong noted that MAS has not recognized WorldCoin as a qualified payment service under the PS Act, but clarified that anyone who trades WorldCoin accounts or tokens as a business may be engaged in payment services.
He said such transactions were illegal and could be used to facilitate criminal activities such as money laundering and terrorist financing.
For this reason, he warned consumers:
“Consumers should be wary of being tempted to transfer access to their digital payment token wallets or WorldID accounts as these accounts may be misused by third parties. We would caution consumers against doing so.”
WorldCoin Legal Challenges
The investigation into WorldCoin in Singapore comes as the company is embroiled in legal troubles around the world.
Over the past year, regulators in Kenya, South Korea, Germany and elsewhere have launched investigations into WorldCoin's use of iris biometric data, citing potential violations of local data protection laws.
However, World Coin Publicly comply with national and international lawThe company has also open-sourced key components of its technology to ensure transparency and further protect user data.
Meanwhile, WorldCoin co-founder Alex Brania expressed his desire to grow the platform to a scale comparable to Facebook to increase its practicality. Currently, the crypto ID project website shows that it has over 6 million registered users from over 160 countries around the world.
WorldCoin’s WLD token has risen by more than 4% over the past 24 hours and is trading at $1.47 at press time, according to data from CryptoSlate.
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