The ‘Singapore Collapse’ Went Viral: Here’s What’s Actually Happening
Chinese-language social media has been buzzing with predictions of Singapore’s decline. Posts claim that luxurious manufacturers are fleeing Marina Bay Sands, and that Orchard Road’s Christmas decorations regarded sparse this vacation season. Some mockingly name Singapore “洗钱坡” (Xǐqiánpō, “cash laundering slope”)—a sardonic play on the city-state’s Mandarin title “新加坡” (Xīnjiāpō)—forecasting the collapse of a metropolis deserted by speculative capital.
But the information tells a unique story. According to Euromonitor International, Singapore’s luxurious market is projected to develop 7-9% in 2025, reaching S$13.9 billion—outpacing Japan, China, and South Korea. This isn’t a collapse. It’s restructuring. Understanding this transformation requires going again to 2019.
From Hong Kong to Singapore: The Great Migration of 2019
When Hong Kong‘s anti-extradition invoice protests intensified in 2019, the geography of Asian finance started to shift. People used to say, “The actual concern right here is that individuals are shifting their firms and their cash in larger numbers to Singapore.”
Back then, 23% of firms with workplaces in Hong Kong have been contemplating relocating business functions, with 9 out of ten selecting Singapore as their most well-liked vacation spot. When Hong Kong’s National Security Law took impact in June 2020, the exodus accelerated.
Hong Kong’s strict zero-COVID insurance policies through the pandemic additional drove monetary expertise and companies towards Singapore. Assets managed by Singapore’s asset management industry doubled in simply 6 years to roughly $4 trillion, with 80% of that coming from overseas. Global asset managers like BlackRock expanded their Singapore operations, whereas Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan shut down its total fairness workforce in Hong Kong.
The Anti-Corruption Campaign and Chinese Capital Flight
Another engine drove capital into Singapore: Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption marketing campaign, launched after his 2012 ascension—essentially the most in depth in Chinese Communist Party historical past.
Under the banner of catching “tigers and flies alike,” greater than 4.7 million officers have been disciplined since 2012, together with 553 at ministerial rank or above. Operations “Sky Net” and “Fox Hunt” pursued fugitives throughout 90 international locations and recovered billions in offshore property.
According to Germany’s Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), “Since 2015, the specter of capital flight has been haunting the Chinese financial system. Faced with the specter of foreign money devaluation and an aggressive anti-corruption marketing campaign, buyers and savers started shifting their wealth out of China. The outflow was so massive that the central financial institution was pressured to spend greater than $1 trillion of its international change reserves to defend the change price.”
Much of this cash flowed into Singapore. The city-state’s household workplaces surged from 400 in 2020 to 1,100 by the top of 2022. The nickname “洗钱坡” (cash laundering slope) emerged from this context.
The Battle for Asia’s Crypto Hub
Money laundering demand intersected with the cryptocurrency business. Following China’s 2017 ICO restrictions and 2021 outright ban, main Chinese exchanges—together with Binance, Huobi, Bybit, and OKX—relocated en masse to Singapore. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin noticed that “Singapore is turning into the middle of crypto communities.”
Why Singapore? Because it was the one viable reply in Asia.
Japan had already discovered painful classes. In 2014, Tokyo-based Mt. Gox—then dealing with over 70% of worldwide Bitcoin transactions—collapsed after hackers stole roughly $500 million price of Bitcoin. Japan’s Financial Services Agency (JFSA) responded by introducing the world’s first registration system for cryptocurrency exchanges in 2016. When one other Japanese crypto change, Coincheck, misplaced $534 million in NEM tokens in January 2018, laws tightened additional.
South Korea went by means of its personal reckoning. The 2017 crypto growth introduced a flood of speculative demand, creating the infamous “kimchi premium“—the place Bitcoin costs in Korea traded considerably larger than international markets. Authorities responded with tightened laws, a stance additional bolstered by FATF’s 2019 Travel Rule suggestions requiring the sharing of buyer data for transactions above sure thresholds.
Singapore took a unique method. While it launched the Payment Services Act (PSA) in 2019, the framework remained comparatively versatile. Foreign crypto corporations have been granted regulatory exemptions permitting them to function quickly with out licenses, supplied they didn’t serve Singapore retail buyers. The business consensus turned: “If you need to do blockchain enterprise in Asia, Singapore is the place.”
Token2049, Asia’s largest blockchain convention, relocated from Hong Kong to Singapore in 2022, pushed by Hong Kong’s zero-COVID insurance policies and regulatory dangers in China. Attendance surged from 7,000 in 2022 to twenty,000 in 2024, reaching a record-breaking 25,000 in 2025.
The Turning Point: Terra-Luna, FTX, and the Fujian Gang
But 2022 marked a turning level for Singapore as effectively.
The Terra-Luna collapse in May, the FTX chapter in November—each had Singapore connections. Singapore-headquartered Three Arrows Capital (3AC) additionally went bankrupt. In 2023 got here the $2.3 billion Fujian Gang money laundering scandal: ten people from China’s Fujian province who had entered Singapore utilizing cast identities to launder proceeds from unlawful playing and cyber fraud.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) shifted its stance. The Digital Token Service Provider (DTSP) licensing regime, which took impact on June 30, 2025, requires all Singapore-based corporations serving abroad crypto prospects to acquire licenses. There was no transition interval.
Bitget and Bybit relocated employees to Dubai and Hong Kong, placing a whole bunch of Singapore-based jobs in danger. A Hong Kong politician publicly acknowledged that “Singapore corporations are welcome to relocate to Hong Kong.”
As of late 2025, round 35 firms maintain Major Payment Institution (MPI) licenses, together with Coinbase, Crypto.com, Circle, and Upbit.
The Luxury Market: Who Left, Who Stayed
The crypto business’s transformation and luxurious market restructuring share the identical underlying logic.
According to Henley & Partners, millionaire inflows to Singapore dropped 54%—from 3,500 in 2024 to 1,600 in 2025. Chinese household workplace purposes fell 50% from their 2022 peak. Non-PR international consumers accounted for just 1% of private property transactions in Q1 2024, down from 6.4% a yr earlier—a direct results of the Additional Buyer’s Stamp Duty (ABSD) hike to 60%.
But the total image differs.
Singapore’s luxurious market grew 7-9% in 2025, in accordance with Euromonitor projections. The secret lies within the city-state’s 242,400 resident millionaires. Singapore’s median family earnings has risen for 5 consecutive years. Local wealth is filling the hole left by international “huge spenders.”
The property market tells the identical story. Foreign possession within the Core Central Region (CCR) has fallen to a 17-year low, with locals now accounting for two-thirds of prime transactions. The worth hole between CCR and different areas has narrowed to 4-6%—the smallest since 2000.
The viral declare that luxurious manufacturers fled Marina Bay Sands can also be false. In July 2025, Chanel opened a 900-square-meter temporary boutique at MBS whereas its flagship retailer undergoes renovation for a 2027 grand reopening—hardly the conduct of a model in retreat. Also, the 2025 Christmas season featured nightly exhibits between the Gucci and Chanel shops.
Strategic Reset, Not Collapse
What’s taking place in Singapore could also be higher understood as strategic de-risking quite than collapse, some observers recommend.
The sample could be seen throughout sectors: a shift from international speculative capital to home wealth base, from unlicensed crypto operators to licensed institutional gamers, from property hypothesis to sustainable native possession. Singapore’s authorities, having absorbed the teachings of the Fujian scandal and FTX collapse, seems to have prioritized long-term stability over short-term development.
The “Singapore collapse” narrative on Chinese-language social media arguably amplifies detrimental alerts—such because the millionaire exodus and crypto business departures—whereas underweighting constructive information, corresponding to luxurious gross sales development and an increasing home wealth base.
One X person’s remark might come nearer to actuality: “消费转级, 不是消费降级”—consumption restructuring, not consumption decline.
Singapore, it may be mentioned, isn’t collapsing. It’s cleansing home.
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