(July 12: Singapore’s state-owned investor Temasek Holdings Pte Ltd is currently not looking to invest in crypto exchanges amid regulatory uncertainty in the sector, its chief investment officer Rohit Sipahimalani said.

“At this point in time, we would not be comfortable investing in exchanges given the way things are right now,” Sipahimalani said in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday (July 11) after the firm reported its worst returns in seven years.

Temasek has long maintained that it doesn’t directly invest in cryptocurrencies, a position that Sipahimalani repeated in the interview with CNBC. The firm’s alternative approach of backing service providers in the space turned sour last year after it wrote down its entire US$275 million (RM955.29 million) investment in FTX.

In a press conference on Tuesday, Sipahimalani reiterated that Temasek was misled by FTX’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried. “If there’s a management that is committed to doing fraud, no matter how much diligence you do, it’s very difficult to uncover that,” he said.

But the firm is not giving up on crypto exchanges entirely, Sipahimalani told CNBC. “If you have the right regulatory framework, and we are comfortable with it, and you have the right investment opportunity, there’s no reason for us to not to look at it.”