The post While The West Regulates Crypto and AI, Singapore Innovates appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

Opinion by: Zac Cheah, co-founder of Pundi AI The West is regulating itself into irrelevance. With Europe and the United States bogged down in committee meetings and legal drafts, Southeast Asia, specifically Singapore, is running live AI pilots in hospitals, refining crypto licensing through targeted enforcement, and attracting top global talent with a governance model that works. Singapore’s secret? A sandbox-first approach that treats innovation not as a threat, but as an opportunity to be carefully tested, not endlessly theorized. The architecture of failure The EU’s artificial intelligence Act is a revealing case study. After years of debate, it produced comprehensive regulations that companies face significant compliance hurdles in implementing, particularly with the act’s phased rollout timeline. This has delayed adoption, especially in healthcare and finance, where clarity is mission-critical. The US isn’t faring better. In 2024, over 40 states introduced AI bills, with no federal framework to coordinate their conflicting requirements. The result? Chaos. What’s permitted in California may be prohibited in Texas. The underlying problem is systemic: European and American regulators share the fundamental miscalculation that every theoretical risk must be eliminated before allowing real-world innovation. Every month spent debating edge cases is another month Singapore spends deploying AI systems, attracting talent and building irreversible strategic advantages. Singapore’s sandbox revolution Singapore discarded the regulate-first model in favor of real-world deployment under strict regulatory containment. The sandboxes enable controlled real-world testing with mandatory emergency shutdown protocols, layered fail-safes and continuous compliance monitoring. When the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) observed crypto firms fleeing Western uncertainty in 2024, it doubled the number of licensing approvals year-over-year. But Singapore’s recent regulatory evolution tells a more sophisticated story. In June 2025, MAS imposed a decisive deadline requiring locally incorporated crypto firms serving only overseas markets to obtain proper licensing or cease operations.…

---

Filed under: News - @ September 2, 2025 9:27 am