The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has proposed giving banks a workable pathway to hold cryptoassets on public, permissionless blockchains without facing prohibitive capital charges — a meaningful departure from both its own previous position and the global standard set by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.

The proposal, published last week as Consultation Paper P009-2026, is the second major consultation MAS has issued on the topic. The first, Consultation Paper P003-2025 published in March last year, proposed implementing the Basel cryptoasset standards for Singapore-incorporated banks with an effective date of 1 January 2026. Industry respondents pushed back hard, arguing that the Basel framework’s treatment…