Singapore’s Wary Crypto Embrace Leaves Top Mogul in the Cold (2)

Binance Holdings Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Changpeng Zhao was putting on a brave face.

An affiliate of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange had just withdrawn its application to run a bourse in Singapore. Zhao, the richest person in cryptocurrency with a fortune of about $90 billion, took to Twitter to say the affiliate’s investment in another exchange -- one that was regulated -- made the application “somewhat redundant.”

Changpeng Zhao

Photographer: Wei Leng Tay/Bloomberg

As it turns out, the other exchange has a license to trade some things -- such as shares in private companies and tokenized assets -- but not cryptocurrencies. More importantly, the ...