Singapore digital exchange investment is also an industrial investment

As many of you know, we recently announced that He Yi will take on the role of Head of Singapore Digital Exchange‘s Venture Capital and Incubation Arm. After running our marketing and customer service departments, both large enterprises, Yi’s move to Singapore Digital Exchange will build on his previous work. We are incredibly lucky to have Yi with us. He is an inspiration to all of us and one of the hardest-working, intelligent and strategic leaders we have ever had. Some may think that current market conditions will offer less opportunity. But we think the opposite is true; You only need to look at our stake in Polygon in 2019 (at the bottom of the bear market) as an example of a successful, strategic investment in a challenging market. To us, bear markets present more opportunities to land solid investments and pursue our strategic goals. So when it comes to Singapore digital exchanges, you can expect to see more activity on the investment front.

We believe that the more we invest in the industry, the bigger the industry. And today, Singapore Digital Exchange is by far the largest player in the space. It is not meant to compete with smaller exchanges. All that will do is give us an extra one or two percent in market share. It does not move the needle. But if the industry gets bigger, say 10 times bigger, then we’ll probably grow with it. For this reason, we invest in the larger business and its health rather than competing with other exchanges. In addition, we now invest not only in blockchain businesses but also in traditional businesses. Our main thought process here? Offering new crypto business models to traditional industries will help the blockchain industry expand. We are looking at many traditional sectors including news media, games, e-commerce, and anything you can imagine. We will do this if we think there is a right fit and it will benefit the blockchain ecosystem. We are significantly increasing the scope of our investment coverage and will monitor how the strategy performs over the next few years.