Asia Is Not Playing Around Anymore

Asia's regulators have had enough. Singapore just added Hyperliquid to its official warning list — the same list Bybit landed on — and Indonesia is building a licensing scheme for social media influencers who promote crypto. Two countries, two different moves, one very clear signal: the freewheeling era in Asian crypto markets is over.

Singapore's List Is Getting Longer

Hyperliquid is now on Singapore's Monetary Authority watchlist alongside Bybit. That is not a coincidence. That is a pattern.

Singapore has long positioned itself as crypto-friendly but not crypto-reckless. The warning list is its way of drawing that line publicly. Landing on it does not mean a platform is immediately shut down or legally barred for every user. What it does mean is that the regulator has formally flagged it as operating outside the regulatory perimeter. That changes things for institutional money, for partnerships, and for the platform's reputation in one of Asia's most important financial hubs.

Bybit's presence on the same list already told the story. Bybit is not a small operation. It is one of the biggest derivatives exchanges in the game. When Singapore puts a name that size on a warning register, it is sending a message to the whole sector. Now Hyperliquid sits right beside it.

Hyperliquid has built a serious reputation in the DeFi derivatives space. The platform runs a decentralised perpetuals exchange and has attracted genuine volume and a loyal user base. None of that insulates it from regulatory heat. If anything, the speed at which it scaled made it more visible to regulators looking for their next example.

We think Singapore's approach here is actually more measured than what you see in some other jurisdictions. It is not a ban. It is a warning. There is a difference. But the practical effect for anyone building serious infrastructure on top of Hyperliquid, or using it for institutional purposes, is that this now carries real reputational and compliance risk.

Indonesia's FinFluencer Problem Is Real

Indonesia's move on crypto influencers is a different kind of story — but it points at the same underlying problem.

The country is building a certification scheme for social media influencers who promote crypto products. Indonesia has an enormous retail crypto user base. It also has an enormous influencer culture. Put those two things together and you get an ecosystem where unqualified people with large followings push tokens, projects, and platforms to millions of ordinary investors who have no way of knowing whether the endorsement is paid, informed, or completely made up.

The damage from that has been real. People have lost money following bad advice dressed up as enthusiasm. Projects have pumped and dumped on the back of influencer campaigns. Indonesia is not the only country where this has happened — it is everywhere — but the scale of the retail exposure there makes the harm particularly acute.

A licensing scheme is a serious response. It says that if you are going to use your platform to move markets, you need to demonstrate some baseline of knowledge and accountability. That is not an unreasonable ask. The alternative — letting anyone with a ring light tell millions of followers to buy a token they know nothing about — has already proven itself to be a disaster.

The obvious critique is enforcement. A licence means nothing if regulators lack the resources or the will to pursue unlicensed operators. Indonesia will need to show it can actually strip people of the right to promote crypto, and that there are real consequences when they carry on without one.

The Bigger Picture

Two Asian markets. Two regulatory moves. Both pointing in the same direction.

Singapore is protecting its financial centre by publicly naming platforms it cannot vouch for. Indonesia is trying to protect retail investors from influencer-driven pump-and-dump culture. Neither approach is perfect. Both are more serious than doing nothing.

The platforms and influencers who built their models on regulatory gaps should be paying attention. Asia is not the wild west it used to be. The list is getting longer. The schemes are getting formalised. Adapt or get flagged. Simple as that.

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