LUNC and Singapore: Terra’s old home, strict new rules

Why Singapore matters to the LUNC story

Singapore sits in an odd place in Terra Classic’s history. Terraform Labs, the company behind the original Terra chain, was incorporated there as Terraform Labs Pte. Ltd. Yet the city-state’s regulator never licensed it, and Singapore is now one of the hardest places in Asia to buy LUNC. No MAS-licensed platform we could check lists the coin, and the global exchanges that list it sit outside the MAS licensing system.

Searches from Singapore reflect a mixed, multilingual audience. People ask “lunc singapore”, “lunc price sgd” and “terraform labs singapore”, and Thai and Chinese queries show up too. This guide answers the local questions directly: what MAS allows, why LUNC is missing from licensed venues, what happened with Terraform Labs, and what a resident can sensibly do. One point up front, because it affects the buttons on this page: CEX.IO does not serve Singapore residents.

MAS licensing and the DTSP regime

The Monetary Authority of Singapore regulates crypto exchanges as providers of digital payment token (DPT) services under the Payment Services Act. Large exchanges need a Major Payment Institution license, and the MAS Financial Institutions Directory lets you check any firm by name. Around 38 firms held a DPT license as a Major Payment Institution in September 2026.

A second layer arrived on 30 June 2025. Under the digital token service provider (DTSP) regime in Part 9 of the Financial Services and Markets Act, Singapore-based firms that serve only customers outside Singapore need a DTSP license, and MAS said it “will generally not issue” one. Firms in that position had to stop from that date. Firms already licensed to serve Singapore customers were not affected. You can read the details in the MAS media release on DTSPs.

The effect is that Singapore no longer works as a base for exchanges that serve the rest of the world while ignoring local rules. For LUNC, it closes off a route that once existed: an offshore-focused platform registered in Singapore cannot simply keep listing coins for overseas users.

What MAS retail rules mean for you

MAS also sets consumer-protection rules for licensed platforms that serve retail customers. They shape what a Singapore resident can do with any token, not just LUNC.

Marketing is restricted too. Since January 2022, MAS guidelines have banned public promotion of DPT services, including through influencers and in public spaces, and crypto ATMs were removed in 2022. That is why you rarely see local crypto ads, and why we keep this page factual rather than promotional. If you want to stake LUNC, the restriction applies to licensed platforms; staking from your own wallet is a different setup, explained in our staking guide.

Local platforms and LUNC: what we checked

We read the public market lists of the main licensed platforms. None offers LUNC. Crypto.com is the only borderline case: its global exchange lists LUNC/USD and a LUNC perpetual, but we could not confirm that Crypto.com offers LUNC to Singapore retail users, so we do not claim it does.

The exchanges where LUNC does trade globally, such as Binance, Bybit, KuCoin, Gate, MEXC and Kraken (which still calls Terra Classic “LUNA”), are covered on our LUNC exchanges page. Whether any of them accepts Singapore residents is a question to check on each platform’s own terms, and the MAS position is that residents should deal with licensed providers.

Terraform Labs and Singapore

“terraform labs singapore” is a common search for good reason. The company that built Terra operated from Singapore, and many people assumed that meant MAS oversight. It did not. Here is the short version of what happened locally.

1. May 2022CollapseUST loses its peg and LUNA hyperinflates; a Singapore citizen files a police report over losses.
2. Jul 2022MAS statementMAS’s managing director says Terraform Labs and LFG were not licensed or regulated by MAS and had not applied.
3. Sep 2022Police updateSingapore police say Do Kwon is not in Singapore.
4. Mar 2023Inquiries openSingapore police begin inquiries into Terraform Labs.
5. 11 Dec 2025US sentenceDo Kwon is sentenced to 15 years in the Southern District of New York.

Terraform Labs itself went through Chapter 11 in Delaware, and its plan was confirmed in September 2024; the company has been winding down since 30 September 2024. It does not run Terra Classic, which is maintained by its community and on-chain governance. The crypto-loss claims window has closed, so buying or holding LUNC now gives no claim. For the full collapse story, see our Terra–LUNA crash guide, and for what LUNC is now, what is LUNC.

Pricing LUNC in SGD

There is no LUNC/SGD pair on any exchange, so every Singapore dollar price is a conversion from USDT markets. The live board at the top of this page shows LUNC in SGD, and our LUNC price page adds the chart and market cap, which has sat in the low hundreds of millions of US dollars. A labeled example with a round, made-up price: if LUNC were S$0.00005, then 1,000,000 LUNC would be worth S$50, and S$500 would buy about 10 million LUNC before fees.

That tiny unit price is why LUNC attracts attention, and why it misleads. The supply is huge, at roughly 6.44 trillion coins after about 462 billion were burned from the 2022 peak. Our supply guide explains why a low price does not mean a coin is cheap.

PayNow, P2P and the CTA question

Licensed platforms in Singapore take SGD through PayNow and FAST bank transfers, and that is the normal way to buy USDT or other listed tokens locally. Locally issued credit cards cannot be used for DPT purchases. There is no licensed P2P marketplace, and the Singapore Police Force regularly warns against selling or renting bank accounts, which can make you part of a money-mule chain.

Now the plain part. The buttons on this site lead to CEX.IO, which lists Singapore among the countries it does not support. Singapore residents cannot open an account there, and we do not suggest working around that. CEX.IO does not list LUNC either; for readers in other Asian markets it is only a way to buy USDT or BTC before moving to a LUNC venue. If you are in Singapore, the buttons are not for you.

Reading from outside Singapore?

Elsewhere in Asia, the usual route is to buy USDT by card, send it to an exchange that lists LUNC and withdraw to your own wallet. This does not apply to Singapore residents.

Create account

Heads-up for Singapore: the exchange behind these buttons does not accept residents of Singapore.

Tax basics for Singapore holders

Singapore is relatively simple here. IRAS generally treats an individual’s gains from buying and selling digital tokens as investment gains, which are not taxed. If your trading is frequent and organized enough to count as a business, gains become taxable income. IRAS’s e-Tax guide on digital tokens sets out the approach, though it may not reflect every later change, so check for newer guidance.

On GST, exchanges of digital payment tokens have been exempt since 1 January 2020. IRAS has also published an e-Tax guide on the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), the international standard for sharing crypto transaction data between tax authorities. Keep your records clean either way.

License first

Practical options for Singapore residents

So what can you actually do? If you already hold LUNC from before, the cleanest setup is self-custody in a native Terra Classic wallet such as Galaxy Station or Keplr, which our wallets guide covers. From there you can stake directly to a validator, track your balance with the explorer and follow governance votes, none of which needs an exchange account.

If you want to buy new LUNC, you face a real limit: no licensed local venue offers it. Any route would run through a platform outside the MAS regime, with no local protection if something goes wrong, and you would need to check that platform’s own terms for Singapore residents. We think most residents are better off watching LUNC rather than chasing it. For comparison, neighboring Malaysia, Indonesia, where Indodax has a LUNC/IDR pair, and Thailand, where Bitkub lists LUNC under “LUNA_THB”, take different approaches. The Asia hub compares all 11 markets.

Our take on LUNC in Singapore