Saturday, December 8, 2018

Crypto, Bitcoin (BTC) Crash Just A “Bump In The Road”

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Crypto, Bitcoin (BTC) Crash Just A “Bump In The Road”

by Nick Chong

December 8, 2018

in Bitcoin News, Cryptocurrency

Crypto, Bitcoin (BTC) Crash Just A “Bump In The Road”

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Diehards: Bitcoin (BTC), Crypto Slump Is Just A Bump

Since Bitcoin (BTC)’s first day on the block, if you will, there have been a number of diehard decentralists that have seen immense value in the world’s first blockchain network. And while much has changed since the launch of the project, originally headed by pseudonymous coder Satoshi Nakamoto, with the crypto industry seeing sweeping market cycles, zealous believers in this decade-old innovation haven’t faltered in their belief.
In a testament to this undying belief, at the Bloomberg Crypto Summit on Friday, a number of crypto-centric panelists and presenters doubled-down on their affection towards cryptocurrencies and related technologies. Speaking on-stage, James Bevan, chief investment officer at CCLA Investment Management, a long-term return-focused consortium, touched on crypto’s recent collapse, which skeptics say is a precursor to a Bitcoin “death spiral.”
Bevan, who once lauded Bitcoin (BTC) as pertinent in the future of global transactions, said the following:

“I don’t regard this as an existential crisis, I just regard it as a bump in the road and institutional investors have had plenty of bumps in the road in conventional currencies and transaction systems.”

Speaking with the Independent U.K., Angel Versetti, CEO of Ambrosus, echoed this sentiment that this is far from the end for cryptocurrencies. In an interview, the blockchain startup chief claimed that while many lambast cryptocurrencies for being in a Dotcom-esque bubble, this is far from the case. In fact, Versetti noted that he “doesn’t believe [that] we are, or were, anywhere close to a bubble with cryptocurrency.” The CEO of the blockchain upstart then added that the arrival of hotshot institutional players, who he dubbed “bankers” and “financiers,” indicates that the industry’s first bonafide bubble is still on the horizon, rather than in the present.
Attributing a figure to his call for an eventual bubble, the Ambrosus chief exclaimed that an eventual $15 to $20 trillion U.S. dollar market capitalization for all crypto assets is within the realm of possibility.

“I Can See A Huge [Stablecoin] Expansion”

After Bevan made his comments, other industry insiders also discussed stablecoins, a growing subset of cryptocurrencies that are aimed at more conservative investors — namely, institutions.
In recent months, a number of stablecoins have hit the market, with even Coinbase and Circle joining the fray. Keeping in mind that these new cryptocurrencies often are lauded as better than Tether (USDT), coupled with the recent downturn in Bitcoin, stablecoins recently saw an influx of buying pressure, as traders sought solace.

As noted by CoinDesk’s market analysis team, three USDT competitors, TrueUSD, USD Coin, and the Paxos Standard, recently entered the crypto Top 30, finding themselves around a ~$190 million market capitalization.

And interestingly, Lewis Fellas, the chief investment officer a British crypto fund Bletchley Park, believes that this growing stablecoin dominance is only slated to continue moving forward, despite the fears regarding Tether and Bitfinex. Fellas explained that there are purportedly 120 stablecoin-centric projects, but this subindustry is still in the “early innings of the proliferation.” The CIO added that he sees “huge expansion” potential, presumably referencing the institutional penchant for this form of cryptocurrency, which is just like a digitized dollar with blockchain values.
The conference attendees also touched on regulation in Bitcoin markets, claiming that it will become a growing facet of this industry henceforth. Although some lauded regulation as a good thing for crypto entrepreneurs, Ryan Radloff, CEO at CoinShares, exclaimed that government intervention could pose challenges, especially if there are discrepancies between crypto-friendly nations, many of which are economically small, and Western powerhouses.
Yet, Marieke Flament, the global chief of marketing at Boston-based Circle, claimed that it is necessary for larger countries to lay a path for cryptocurrency regulation, instead of leaving nations to play a never-ending waiting game.

Title Image Courtesy of JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash

Nick Chong

Nick has been fascinated with crypto assets and blockchain tech since finding out about them in 2013. He has since gotten involved as a writer, covering news stories daily on a variety of sites.

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Friday, December 7, 2018

Bitcoin's epic plunge continues

New York (CNN Business)What a difference a year makes for bitcoin.

In December 2017, bitcoin prices hit a record high of just under $20,000. Flash forward to December 2018 and bitcoin is now trading a little below $3,400. That's a more than 80% plunge. Bitcoin is at a 15-month low.

But prices have really gotten whacked this week, falling nearly 20% in just the past five days alone.

Bitcoin isn't the only cryptocurrency getting hit either. Ripple/XRP, ethereum, stellar, litecoin and numerous other cryptocurrencies have plunged in the past week.

Little tangible news can explain or justify the current crypto carnage.

One possible reason is that a pro-crypto member of the Securities and Exchange Commission warned at a conference this week that she's fighting an uphill battle trying to convince the rest of the SEC to approve more bitcoin exchange traded funds.

"Don't hold your breath. I do caution people to not live or die on when a crypto or bitcoin ETF gets approved," said SEC commissioner Hester Peirce.

That's not a good sign. Peirce's comments probably mean hopes for a bitcoin ETF getting approved anytime soon have been dashed, according to long-term bitcoin bull Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst with Think Markets UK Ltd.

Bitcoin prices keeps plunging. When will they hit bottom?

Aslam argued that bitcoin prices could wind up plummeting below $2,000 and even test the $1,500 level.

"Simply put, the bad news keeps coming just like cockroaches coming out of a hole," Aslam wrote in a report.

More downside could be ahead simply because the price of bitcoin and many other digital currencies just ran up so sharply last year. It was a parabolic move that defied reason, similar to internet stocks in the late 1990s -- a classic mania.

Nearly two-thirds of money managers surveyed by asset management firm Natixis still thought that cryptocurrencies were a bubble, the firm reported this week.

Less Than Two Months Away – Bitcoin Cash Upgrade Discussion Heats Up

Wednesday, 19 September 2018

Less Than Two Months Away – Bitcoin Cash Upgrade Discussion Heats Up

The November 15th Upgrade Debate Continues

Right now is probably a pretty confusing time for a few people just learning about the disagreement taking place concerning the scheduled November 15, 2018, Bitcoin Cash network upgrade. Currently, there are two camps that disagree on which features will be added to the hard fork this November — The Bitcoin ABC development team and the clients’ supporters, and the Nchain development team and the Bitcoin SV clients’ crew of proponents.

The Bitcoin ABC development team wants to add an opcode called OP_CHECKDATASIGVERIFY (DSV) that aims to improve BCH scripting, canonical transaction ordering (CTOR), and some minor technical fixes and improvements.
The Nchain team and it’s BCH full node client called Bitcoin SV wants an entirely different set of features. Bitcoin SV’s upgrade list includes a 128MB block size increase, add the opcodes: OP_MUL, OP_LSHIFT, OP_RSHIFT, OP_INVERT, and remove the limit of 201 opcodes per script.

At first, the most vocal person against the Bitcoin ABC proposals was Nchain’s chief scientist Craig Wright. However, there are many others who support the idea of Bitcoin SV and the blockchain, and mining firm Coingeek had decided to support Nchain’s idea from the beginning. Since then Nchain has released its alpha version codebase, started a Bitcoin SV mining pool so people can direct hashrate to the client, and both the mining pools Coingeek and BMG Pool (Nchain’s hashrate) have managed to capture 46.2 percent of the global BCH hashrate over the last seven days.

Less Than Two Months Away - Bitcoin Cash Upgrade Discussion Heats Up — **BMG Pool (Nchain) and Coingeek control more than 46.2 percent of the global BCH hashrate over the last seven days.**

Bitcoin Cash Proponents Argue the Pros and Cons of Canonical Transaction Ordering

There have been so many arguments for and against some of the features the two camps are promoting. For instance, there have been lots of conversations in regard to adding CTOR and plenty of discussions against the idea. Andrew Stone wrote a critique about CTOR on September 7th called “Why ABC’s CTOR Will Not Scale.” Coingeek has published opinions against adding CTOR in a post two days ago. The Coingeek post also leads to another critical evaluation of CTOR by the Reddit user /u/awemany and the BCH developer Tom Zander.

On the other hand, Electron Cash developer Jonald Fyookball wrote a case for adding CTOR to the Bitcoin Cash protocol this week. Of course, early on Bitcoin ABC has published some opinions as to why the development team believes CTOR should be added to the BCH codebase. Another post on r/btc, written by Mark Blundeberg, gives a comprehensive technical dive into canonical transaction ordering, and the BCH mining pool Rawpool has also given an objective evaluation towards CTOR. The Bitcoin Miner Jonathan Toomim also added some information to the mix with his block propagation data that stemmed from Bitcoin Cash stress tests that took place a couple of weeks ago.

“During the stress test, blocks propagated through the non-China mainnet at around 300–1000 kB/s — This is pretty slow, and would cause problems with orphan rates if block sizes were frequently larger than 8 MB unless we improve our block propagation algorithms,” Toomim explains in his recent post.

The Pros and Cons Concerning the OP_Code CHECKDATASIGVERIFY or DSV

Then there are many discussions concerning the OP_CHECKDATASIGVERIFY (DSV) feature Bitcoin ABC wants to add. Nchain’s Craig Wright says that “DSV opens many issues” and others have disagreed with the idea of adding DSV as well. One Github repository details another option the community could use instead of DSV called recursive smelting. Then Nchain’s senior researcher Owen Vaughan recently published a paper called “Rabin Signatures in Bitcoin Cash.” The paper posits the belief that “arbitrary messages can be signed and verified directly in Bitcoin Cash script without introducing new opcodes.”

Mark Blundeberg has written another extensive post that shows the benefits of DSV called “’Pay To Identity’ — a proposed use of OP_CHECKDATASIG.” Moreover, another post published on Yours.org by a writer named Perica argues that DSV is already in the codebase, and has been there since the creation of the Bitcoin version 0.1 release. Perica’s paper claims the current DSV model, that’s already baked into the original code, is a “more powerful form than the one proposed by various developer teams.”

Bitcoin Cash Supporters Have so Much to Discuss Over the Next Few Weeks Before the Fork, and Anything Can Happen Between Now and Then

There’s been so much to discuss its hard to believe the fork will happen this November but right now both camps seem pretty adamant an upgrade will take place. Further people can stay rather neutral and run either Bitcoin XT or the Bitcoin Unlimited clients, as those teams plan to allow the decision to be ultimately made by majority hashrate. There’s also a lot of bickering between community members over the 128MB increase and whether or not the chain should upgrade the block size now. The stress test, although remarkable, offered insight to some of the problems (block propagation times & bottleneck) introduced by exceeding blocks larger than 8MB. However, a slew of big block advocates believe the network can handle super large blocks and some think the limit should be removed entirely.

In order to keep our readers informed over the course of the next few weeks leading up to the November 15 upgrade, news.Bitcoin.com is sure to be there every step of the way.

The Daily: Iran to Allow Mining Hardware Imports, Cyprus Creates Fintech Hub

Iran to Legalize the Import of Mining Equipment, Considers Exchange

Just two weeks after Iranian authorities announced a decision to recognizecryptocurrency mining as an economic activity, the government in Tehran is preparing to officially endorse the import of hardware equipment used to mint digital coins.

The move is aimed at supporting the new industry in times when the country’s economy is under heavy pressure exacerbated by reintroduced US sanctions. It also comes after in August Iran stepped up plans to issue a national cryptocurrency.

This week, the Secretary of the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace, Abolhassan Firouzabadi, was quoted by Iranian media saying: “Necessary coordination has been done with related entities to allow the flow of hardware needed to mine bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.” The high-ranking official also noted that besides legalizing crypto mining, the Council is also considering the establishment of an online digital assets exchange.

Cryptocurrencies Must Be Understood, Says Chair of Major Spanish Bank

Cryptocurrencies are “perfect” but are used for “bad purposes” today, so we have to be careful, according to Francisco Gonzalez, Group Executive Chairman of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, Spain’s second largest bank.

In an interview with CNBC, BBVA’s representative also noted that blockchain, the distributed ledger technology underpinning digital currencies, is a “big, big tool”, but warned about the insufficient understanding of it too. Gonzalez, whose bank is actively investing in the fintech space, also pointed out:

We are in the middle of an incredible digital revolution. And in fact, a new world order is in the making, both social and economic…Something must be done in order to spread the wealth of this revolution to everybody…There are some ripple effects which must be understood in the case of cryptocurrencies.

Cyprus Creates Fintech Hub to Catch Up With Competition in the Crypto Space

Probably as part of its efforts to better understand cryptocurrencies and the underlying technology, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) has established a Fintech Innovation Hub on the island. The Mediterranean nation, where financial services are a significant contributor to the gross domestic product (GDP), has to catch up with countries like Estonia, Malta and Lichtenstein which are definitely ahead in the race to attract businesses from the crypto space.

CySEC Chair Demetra Kalogerou believes regulation has to ensure the transfer of financial goods and services in a fair way. However, she also says that it’s not just about supervision of persons but the very technology that’s being used.

“We don’t want our regulatory framework to be static. We want it to progress in line with the demands of today’s and tomorrow’s investor,” Kalogerou stressed in an interview with Finance Magnates. That’s why, she pointed out, a dedicated hub would allow the Cypriots to experiment with the new technology in a safe environment and understand the risks and benefits before potential investors are exposed to new investment products.

New Finance Minister in Harare Pushing for a Crypto Unit at RBZ

Mthuli Ncube, Zimbabwe’s newly appointed finance minister, revealed he is trying to convince the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ), the central bank of the economically hurting country, to establish a “cryptocurrency unit”, African media reported. The push is part of his plans to mitigate the nation’s ongoing cash shortage and position it better for new investments.

“Zimbabwe should be investing in understanding innovations and often central banks are too slow in investing in these technologies. But there are other countries which are moving faster. If you look at the Swiss central bank, they are investing in and understanding bitcoin,” Ncube said, quoted by IT Web Africa. The minister believes that if countries like Switzerland see value in cryptocurrencies, Zimbabwe should also pay attention.

“We have innovative youngsters, so the idea shouldn’t be to stop it and say don’t do this, but rather the regulators should invest in catching up with them and find ways to understand it. Then you regulate it because you now understand it,” added the representative of the current executive power in Harare.

Denmark’s Largest Bank Took Two Years to Close Accounts of Blacklisted Russian Clients

Danske ‘Ok’ With Blacklisted Clients

Danske Bank is currently under investigation by authorities in three countries: the US, Denmark, and Estonia. Its officials reportedly “knew earlier than previously indicated about problems at its tiny Estonia branch, including that it held accounts for blacklisted Russian clients,” The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing correspondence it has seen. The publication elaborated:

Officials at Danske Bank were aware almost two years before it started shutting questionable accounts that the small but highly profitable branch was involved in potentially illicit money flows.

The Estonian branch was one of the bank’s profit drivers, generating a net profit of €63 million (~US$73.5 million) in 2012, the most lucrative year. The whole bank reported €636.6 million (~$742.6 million) in net profit that year, the publication noted.

The largest bank in Denmark has been at the center of one of Europe’s largest money laundering cases. Between 2007 and 2015, an estimated $150 billion was suspected to have flowed through the branch to accounts belonging to non-Estonian customers including Russian clients. However, the bank has not confirmed how much of that figure comes from suspicious transactions. It has launched an internal investigation and is expected to announce the results on Wednesday, Sept. 19.

Discriminating Email

According to the Wall Street Journal, an April 2013 email reveals that the bank’s anti-money laundering (AML) chief based in Denmark had asked colleagues in the Estonian branch “about client accounts whose owners appeared on a blacklist generated by Russia’s central bank.” The Bank of Russia keeps a database of individuals and companies suspected of financial wrongdoing which it shares across borders. The list currently has about 500,000 names.

The Estonian Financial Supervision Authority (FSA) said on Tuesday that “it repeatedly complained to Danish counterparts about the branch’s blacklisted customers,” the news outlet conveyed, adding that in a 2013 email, Niels Thos Mikkelsen, the bank’s then-compliance executive, wrote:

They have the impression that we do not take the issue seriously.

Furthermore, the news outlet added that a spokesman for the Danish FSA pointed out that a reprimand ruling against Danske Bank in May states that the authority received “misleading” information from the bank between 2012 and 2014. Danske claims the information came from the branch.

While the Financial Times recently reported that Thomas Borgen, the bank’s CEO, was notified in October 2013 about suspicious transactions at the Estonian branch, Borgen insists that “he was not informed in detail at the time about the problems,” Reuters described on Tuesday, elaborating:

The Danske Bank case has led to speculation in Denmark that its chief executive Thomas Borgen, who was in charge of its international operations, including Estonia, between 2009 and 2012, will step down.

Tuesday, 11 September 2018

California Passes Bill Defining Blockchain and Crypto Terms

California State Legislature Adopts DLT Bill

California democrat, 32-year old Assembly member Ian Calderon has scored a notable success in his efforts to push through a draft defining basic terms related to cryptocurrencies and the underlying distributed ledger technology (DLT). The state’s legislature has recently passed his Assembly Bill 2658 which introduces legal definitions of “blockchain technology” and “smart contract”, and revises others like “electronic record” and “electronic signature” to legalize and facilitate record keeping using DLT. The draft is co-sponsored by Senate democrat Bob Hertzberg.

Several important laws will be amended through the adoption of the bill. This will include changes of the provisions of Sections 1624.5 and 1633.2 and adding a new Section 1633.75 to the state’s Civil Code. The act also amends Section 25612.5 of the Corporations Code, Section 16.5 of the Government Code, and Section 38.6 of the Insurance Code relating to electronic records.

California Passes Bill Defining Blockchain and Crypto Terms

The existing Uniform Electronic Transactions Act of California specifies that a record or signature may not be denied legal effect or enforceability solely because they are in electronic form. It also states that a contract may not be denied legal effect or enforceability only because an electronic record was used in its formation. The act clarifies that if a law requires a record to be in writing, or if it requires a signature, an electronic record or signature should satisfy the law.

Bill 2658 aims to revise provisions of the act that define “electronic record” and “electronic signature” to include a record or a signature secured through blockchain technology. It would also add the term “smart contract” to the legal definition of “contract.” Additionally, the draft specifies that a person who uses blockchain technology to secure information in relation to interstate or foreign commerce retains the same rights of ownership and use as before the data was secured with a distributed ledger.

‘Blockchain Technology Provides Uncensored Truth’

The introduction of legal definitions describing key terms related to DLT technologies and cryptocurrencies, in general, is a major merit of Calderon’s bill. One of the important new provisions states that “Blockchain technology means distributed ledger technology that uses a distributed, decentralized, shared, and reciprocal ledger, that may be public or private, permissioned or permissionless, or driven by tokenized crypto economics or tokenless.” Clause (c) added to Section 1633.2 of the California Civil Code reads that “the data on the ledger is protected with cryptography, immutable, auditable, and “provides an uncensored truth.”

Another new text, 1633.2 (p), defines the term “smart contract” as “an event-driven program that runs on a distributed, decentralized, shared, and replicated ledger that can take custody over, and instruct transfer of, assets on that ledger.” And in 1633.2 (e) of the revised act, the authors of the amendments have made it clear that “Contract”, as defined in the law, includes smart contracts. Additions to section 1633.2 (h) and (i) of the Civil Code now note that “A record that is secured through blockchain technology is an electronic record” and “A signature that is secured through blockchain technology is an electronic signature.”

Bill 2658 has been passed in the state’s Senate, on August 23 and in the Assembly, on August 27, after both houses made several amendments since it was introduced in the California legislature earlier this year. To become law, it needs to be signed by Governor Jerry Brown.

Indian Officials Visit Regulators in Japan, UK, Switzerland to Study Crypto

Officials Sent to Japan, UK, and Switzerland

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) revealed in its annual report 2017-18 that it sent some officials to three countries to study how the regulators there deal with cryptocurrencies.

Indian Officials Visit Regulators in Japan, UK, Switzerland to Study Crypto

The report explains,“SEBI on a regular basis enables study tour of SEBI officials to overseas authorities. These study tours help engage with the international regulators and gain [a] deeper understanding of the systems and mechanisms.” The securities watchdog noted that in the past, it “has benefited a lot from these experiences and the knowledge transfer helps improve the processes within SEBI.”

For the fiscal year 2017-18, the regulator detailed:

SEBI organised study tours to Financial Services Agency (FSA) Japan, Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) UK, and Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) Switzerland to study initial coin offerings and cryptocurrencies.

RBI Also Observes Foreign Regulators

SEBI is not the only Indian regulator to pay attention to other jurisdictions. Recently, the country’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), published its annual report for 2017-18 with a section on cryptocurrency. After referencing how a few foreign regulators deal with crypto, the central bank wrote:

On a global level, regulatory responses to cryptocurrency have ranged from a complete clamp down in some jurisdictions to a comparatively ‘light touch regulatory approach’…Japan and South Korea account for the biggest shares of crypto asset markets in the world.

The RBI also confirmed it is “keeping a close watch on cryptocurrency,” reiterating that it issued a circular, banning banks from providing services to crypto businesses.

When the circular was issued in April, Quartz quoted Shubham Yadav, co-founder of Indian crypto exchange Coindelta, commenting that “several firms are looking at registering their head offices out of India.” The news outlet added that these locations include Singapore, Switzerland, Estonia, Malta, Japan, Dubai, and the Cayman Islands.

Crypto Regulations in India

The Indian government has been working on cryptocurrency regulations. According to Subhash Chandra Garg, Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs, the proposal was supposed to be ready in July. Garg heads the panel, set up in December last year, tasked with proposing crypto regulations. However, it was reported earlier this month that the regulations are unlikely to be ready before the year-end.

Meanwhile, the country’s supreme court is hearing all petitions against the central bank’s crypto banking ban on September 11. SEBI will also be at the hearing. The crypto industry is hopeful that the court will lift the ban imposed by the RBI.

Binance Wants to Invest in Africa, Reaches Out to African Projects

Binance Reaches Out to Africa

Benjamin Rameau, Director at Binance Labs , has published on Friday an explanation about the commitment by the company to invest in Africa and called on supporters to help connect them to African projects with excellent founders. He proclaimed: “We have no headquarters, no office and no geographical boundaries. We are just as African as we are Asian or European. The blockchain revolution will be a global one and Binance Labs will consider investments in all non-sanctioned countries. In Africa, we feel very much at home and we want to deploy our capital there.”

The company is turning to Africa not out of charity, or even a need to diversify its portfolio globally, but out of a pure profit motive. It sees investing in the continent as the ultimate contrarian play of our times, as Rameau explained: “Come 2018, the consensus view holds that the 21st century belongs to Asia; yet we believe that it will be Africa’s turn to surprise. Investing today in Africa could be the best trade of the century.”

An African Future

A multitude of factors support the prediction that the continent will be the greatest investment opportunity of our time. For example, in an era when many developed economies are suffering from an aging population and shrinking labor pools, Africa enjoys a large and growing young populace. Additionally, there are multiple reasons that crypto projects are uniquely suited to take part in these developments. Chief among these is that while an entrenched banking industry in rich countries can try to block new technologies which may endanger its profits, many parts of Africa are without such an impediment and can thus leapfrog directly into the age of crypto-based financial infrastructure.

Many countries in Africa also have very competitive wages and an underused labor pool that are very appealing for expense-sensitive crowdsourcing projects. As Rameau noted: “If screening through scams on Twitter and registering fake accounts pays $3/hour, developed market contributors will face high opportunity costs and be pushed out of the labor pool, but this rate could be a handsome reward for someone working out of Somalia.”

Philippine SEC to Publish Draft Crypto Exchange Regulations Next Week

Philippine SEC Exploring Regulating Crypto Exchanges as Trading Platforms

Local media has reported that SEC Commissioner, Ephyro Amatong, has stated that the Philippine SEC is exploring regulating virtual currency exchanges.

“We see the need to regulate them as trading platforms,” Commissioner Amatong said, adding that the legislative frameworks of Australia and Switzerland are currently being reviewed as possible templates.

Commissioner Amatong indicated that the SEC expects to release draft regulations by the end of next week.

Philippine SEC to Join Forces With Central Bank

Commissioner Amatong also stated that the Philippine SEC will operate in partnership with the country’s central bank, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), in its efforts to regulate virtual currency exchanges.

“We already discussed the matter with the BSP since the BSP is also interested and we are also interested. The discussion [involved] joint cooperative oversight over VCEs engaged in trading,” he said.

SEC Also Expected to Publish Final ICO Regulations Next Week

The Philippine SEC is also expected to publish the final iteration of its regulations pertaining to initial coin offerings (ICOs) next week following recent public commentary.

Commissioner Amatong stated that the SEC is developing a permissive legislative apparatus pertaining to ICOs, facilitating a “safe” means for small and medium-sized enterprises to raise capital with the crowdfunding method.

“Part of the promise is technology will allow smaller companies to raise funds in a safe manner,” he said. “Previously, you had to go through all of the infrastructures of the [Philippine Stock Exchange] or [Philippine Dealing Exchange] […] in order to raise the funds but what financial technology promises is you can achieve that through technology at a lower cost so even if you are a small company.”

“You have a way to look for investors without going through the whole process of a security,” Commissioner Amatong added.

Saturday, December 8, 2018

Crypto, Bitcoin (BTC) Crash Just A “Bump In The Road”

Diehards: Bitcoin (BTC), Crypto Slump Is Just A Bump

“I Can See A Huge [Stablecoin] Expansion”

Related Posts

Friday, December 7, 2018

Wednesday, 19 September 2018

The November 15th Upgrade Debate Continues

Bitcoin Cash Proponents Argue the Pros and Cons of Canonical Transaction Ordering

The Pros and Cons Concerning the OP_Code CHECKDATASIGVERIFY or DSV

Bitcoin Cash Supporters Have so Much to Discuss Over the Next Few Weeks Before the Fork, and Anything Can Happen Between Now and Then

Iran to Legalize the Import of Mining Equipment, Considers Exchange

Cryptocurrencies Must Be Understood, Says Chair of Major Spanish Bank

Cyprus Creates Fintech Hub to Catch Up With Competition in the Crypto Space

New Finance Minister in Harare Pushing for a Crypto Unit at RBZ

Danske ‘Ok’ With Blacklisted Clients

Discriminating Email

Tuesday, 11 September 2018

California State Legislature Adopts DLT Bill

‘Blockchain Technology Provides Uncensored Truth’

Officials Sent to Japan, UK, and Switzerland

RBI Also Observes Foreign Regulators

Crypto Regulations in India

Binance Reaches Out to Africa

An African Future

Philippine SEC Exploring Regulating Crypto Exchanges as Trading Platforms

Philippine SEC to Join Forces With Central Bank

SEC Also Expected to Publish Final ICO Regulations Next Week