Hyperliquid Alert and FinFluencer Licensing: Asia Crypto Express

Crypto markets have continued to attract regulators worldwide, with new rules and enforcement actions spanning exchanges, social media promotions, and stablecoin infrastructure. In Singapore, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) added decentralized perpetuals platform Hyperliquid to its Investor Alert List, while Indonesia introduced certification requirements for influencers promoting crypto and other digital financial assets.

Meanwhile, South Korea fined Bithumb after it was found to have transferred user data overseas without separate consent, and Japan advanced mainstream exchange consolidation as SBI Holdings agreed to acquire Bitbank in a 46.7 billion yen (about $289 million) deal. Elsewhere, stablecoin projects also moved closer to wholesale finance use cases through new initiatives involving banks and financial institutions.

Key takeaways

• MAS inclusion on Singapore’s Investor Alert List flags potential consumer-protection concerns, not a prohibition or enforcement action.
• Indonesia’s new 2026 regulation requires qualified certification for “finfluencers” promoting crypto, alongside tighter limits on which assets and exchanges can be promoted.
• South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission fined Bithumb for transferring personal information overseas without separate consent during order book sharing and asset transfer.
• SBI’s Bitbank acquisition, expected to close around October subject to approval, would strengthen SBI’s position in Japan’s exchange and custody landscape.
• Stablecoin infrastructure efforts are increasingly focused on FX settlement and wholesale financial plumbing rather than consumer payments.

Singapore flags Hyperliquid on the Investor Alert List

On Friday, Singapore’s financial regulator MAS added Hyperliquid to its Investor Alert List. According to the listing, the entry includes the Hyper Foundation website and the Hyperliquid trading app.

MAS positions the Investor Alert List as a consumer protection tool designed to identify entities that might be misunderstood as licensed or regulated by MAS. Importantly, inclusion on the list does not indicate a ban or signal that enforcement action has been taken.

MAS has been expanding the list across recent months. The regulator added Bybit on June 17, and other crypto-related platforms—such as KuCoin and Bitget—appear on the list as well.

Hyperliquid responded by saying it has never claimed it is licensed or authorized by MAS and that nothing about its permissionless infrastructure has changed. For users, the practical effect is less about service disruption and more about clarifying how the platform is perceived in relation to Singapore’s regulatory oversight.

Indonesia tightens crypto influencer promotions with certification rules

Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority introduced certification requirements aimed at influencers who recommend crypto and other digital financial assets. Under Financial Services Authority Regulation No. 6 of 2026, announced Wednesday, individuals promoting digital assets must obtain competency certifications unless they are already covered by a separate licensing requirement.

The regulation also restricts what influencers can recommend: they may promote only digital assets listed on authorized exchanges. Service providers promoted by influencers must also be licensed. In addition, marketing campaigns must be carried out through regulated financial services businesses, which are responsible for the promotional content and must distribute it through their official communication channels.

These changes align Indonesia with a broader global trend. The rules mirror tightening approaches already underway in jurisdictions such as Australia and the United Kingdom, which have introduced broader controls for investment promotions and finfluencer activity, and the Philippines, which has adopted crypto-specific marketing restrictions.

For the Indonesian market, the key question now is how compliance will be implemented in practice—particularly how certification is obtained, enforced, and verified, and how platforms and promoters will ensure that promoted assets and counterparties match the authorized framework.

South Korea fines Bithumb for overseas transfer of user data

South Korean authorities moved from market oversight into direct privacy enforcement. According to a Thursday notice from the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC), Bithumb was ordered to pay a fine of $136,000 after investigators found the exchange breached personal information protection rules when it sent user data overseas.

The PIPC said its investigation determined Bithumb “transferred personal information overseas without the separate consent of the data subjects” during order book sharing and virtual asset transfers with overseas virtual asset exchanges.

The incident, as described by the regulator, relates to Bithumb sharing its Tether (USDT) order books between September and November 2025 with BingX, despite having consent to share data with Stellar. The PIPC also cited Bithumb sharing user information with 13 overseas exchanges.

Regulatory consequences in this area matter beyond a single exchange: data-transfer practices are a core operational issue for firms operating globally or linking liquidity across venues. The case underscores that “consent” can be treated as specific and separate for particular counterparties and use cases—not a one-time blanket approval.

SBI’s Bitbank acquisition and the push for institutional crypto infrastructure

In Japan, consolidation continues. Japan’s SBI Holdings has signed agreements to acquire full control of crypto exchange Bitbank through a transaction valued at 46.7 billion yen (about $289 million), advancing an earlier deal first disclosed in May. SBI expects the transaction to close around October, subject to regulatory clearance.

The deal would expand SBI’s regulated crypto exchange footprint and customer base. It also suggests potential cross-sell opportunities around stablecoins, tokenized assets, and onchain financial products—areas where large, regulated institutions typically seek additional distribution channels.

CoinGecko data shows Bitbank’s daily trading volume has generally stayed below $50 million for most of the past four months, with the BTC/JPY pair accounting for 39.5% of volume. XRP/JPY and ETH/JPY each accounted for 19.7%. SBI said combining Bitbank with SBI VC Trade would yield about 1.1 trillion yen in assets under custody and roughly 2.92 million crypto accounts, positioning the combined business as the largest Japanese crypto exchange group.

Stablecoins move further into FX settlement experiments

Beyond exchanges and marketing rules, institutional use cases are also advancing. Chainlink said it joined a working group with European and South Korean banking organizations to explore how stablecoins could be used for foreign exchange (FX) settlement.

Announced as Project Pangea, the initiative brings together multiple participants: South Korean digital asset infrastructure provider FairSquareLab; the Unified Korea Alliance (UniKA), a consortium that includes more than a dozen Korean commercial banks; and Qivalis, a euro stablecoin consortium backed by 37 European banks. The project’s goal is to evaluate direct, atomic swaps of euro- and South Korean won-denominated stablecoins using Chainlink’s data infrastructure alongside FairSquareLab’s onchain FX settlement technology.

This continues a notable shift in how stablecoins are being tested by finance: rather than focusing solely on consumer payment rails, institutions increasingly evaluate stablecoins for wholesale settlement and back-office infrastructure.

Readers should watch for how regulators operationalize these new frameworks—especially Indonesia’s influencer certification requirements and privacy enforcement approaches in Asia—as well as whether Japan’s Bitbank deal progresses on schedule and whether FX settlement pilots involving stablecoins transition from experiments into regulated deployments.