Chinese Entrepreneur Warns Against Mining and ICO Bans

Angel investor and Founder of Chinese app Meitu, Cai Wensheng, has published criticisms of the central government’s expanding regulatory crackdown on cryptocurrencies via Wechat. Mr. Wensheng warns that heavy-handed regulatory policies may squander the opportunity for China to maintain a significant presence in the burgeoning global cryptocurrency sector, in addition to arguing that many of the challenges faced by cryptocurrencies are indicative of the typical “development process” experienced by emerging monetary forms.

Cai Wensheng, the founder of Meitu, has expressed criticisms of the Chinese government’s prohibitive regulatory policies regarding cryptocurrency mining and initial coin offerings (ICOs).

According to The Meitu founder, the majority of the world’s bitcoin mines are located in China, with Mr. Wensheng estimating that “80%” of the world’s bitcoins are produced by hardware housed in China. As such, Mr. Wensheng believes that a regulatory crackdown targeting bitcoin mining risks squandering the opportunity to maintain its dominance in the bitcoin markets, describing such a potential export industry.

Mr. Wensheng argues that China should use bitcoin mining surplus power for productive purposes, stating that “China’s surplus power [can be used] to produce surplus power to produce bitcoin, [which can be] sold to the South Koreans, Japanese, and Americans” – making China “a bitcoin foreign exchange earner.” However, Mr. Wensheng also warns that if bitcoin miners are “forced overseas [to] Iceland, Chinese people will need to spend a lot on foreign exchanges to buy back bitcoin.”

Challenges Faced by New Monetary Forms

The Meitu Founder argues that many of the challenges and criticisms faced by bitcoin have been experienced by other emerging monetary forms throughout history, stating that “every coin is a kind of faith.” Mr. Wenshen asserts that many of the world’s national currencies have gone through numerous periods of considerable volatility throughout history, claiming that political instability led to dramatic price fluctuations for many sovereign currencies prior to 1973.

“This is the case with the Golden Circle Certificates of the Republic of China, Mr. Wenshen stated, adding that instability is an inherent component of the requisite “development process” experienced by emerging monetary forms.

Mr. Wensheng also predicted that cryptocurrencies will reshape the securities industry.

Entrepreneur Warns Against Heavy-Handed ICO Regulations

Mr. Wensheng has argued that initial coin offerings do away with many of the barriers preventing ordinary investors from being able to access exposure to emerging companies, adding that venture capital and investment firms typically access tokens at the same price as their retail counterparts in the ICO markets.

Mr. Wensheng also compared the ICO markets to the dotcom bubble of the nineteen-nineties, stating that of the “hundreds of companies” that listed Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) “in 1999” very “few companies are left,” however, “One Amazon is enough” – implying that heavy-handed restrictions on ICOs may result in China failing to facilitate the growth of potential major companies that could emerge through the disruptive ICO sector.

Author: Samual Haig

Posted by David Ogden Entrepreneur

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Coinbase Informs 13K Affected Customers Of Imminent Data Handover To IRS

US-based cryptocurrency exchange and wallet service Coinbase sent an official notice Friday, Feb. 23 to approximately 13,000 of its customers whose information it is legally required to turn over to the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

The IRS had initially asked Coinbase in July 2017 to hand over even more detailed information on every one of its then over 500,000 users in an attempt catch those cheating on their taxes. However, another court order in Nov. 2017 reduced this number to around 14,000 “high-transacting” users, which the platform now reports as 13,000, in what Coinbase calls a “partial, but still significant, victory for Coinbase and its customers.”

On Friday, Coinbase told the around 13,000 affected customers that the company would be providing their taxpayer ID, name, birth date, address, and historical transaction records from 2013-2015 to the IRS within 21 days.

Coinbase’s letter to these customers encourages them “to seek legal advice from an attorney promptly” if they have any questions. Their website also states that concerns may also be addressed on Coinbase’s Taxes FAQ.

The ongoing legal battle between Coinbase and the US government dates back to November, 2016, when the IRS filed a “John Doe summons” in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

On Feb. 13, personal finance service Credit Karma released data showing that only 0.04 percent of their customers had reported cryptocurrencies on their federal tax returns so far this tax season.

Author Molly Jane Zuckerman

Posted by David Ogden Entrepreneur
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Crypto Mining Craze Creates Global GPU Shortage

The cryptocurrency bull run of 2017 attracted multitudes of investors looking to get rich quick but it also created a mining boom that has resulted in a worldwide shortage of computer components.

Miners Plunder Singapore, Hong Kong For Cheap Rigs

Scores of miners from around the world come to the electronics bazaars in Asia to buy cryptocurrency rigs. Hong Kong’s Sham Shui Po and Singapore’s Sim Lim Square to name just a couple are jammed with people of all ages ordering specialized rigs.

This new demand for mining rigs has revitalized these electronic markets that were dying only a few years ago when shoppers turned online for computers, cameras, and gadgets of all kinds.

“It’s 30-50 percent cheaper to buy equipment related to crypto-mining in Hong Kong than in Europe,” Russian bitcoin miner Dima Popov said. This is because Hong Kong has no sales tax and is in close proximity to Chinese components manufacturers.

Miners are demanding more powerful rigs that can include up to 500 graphics cards each which has created a worldwide shortage of the cards allowing manufacturers and retailers to gauge buyers on the price.

Scarce GPU Cards Selling At Double Price

The market for high-end graphics cards used to work like anything else. You went to the electronics shop, found the card you wanted and paid just about the Manufacturer’s retail price. Today due to the escalating demand from mining you’ll most likely find the shelves that once held them bare but if you do actually what your looking for expect to pay a premium.

These high-end graphics cards are the most efficient way to mine cryptocurrency and as hobbyist miners and big players alike scramble to snatch up as many as they can prices go through the roof. Last summer popular GPU’s like the AMD Radeon RX 580 sold for about $250 at retail, today the price is more likely to be over $500 and that is if you can find them.

Checking the price of the 5 most popular graphics cards from last year and comparing it with the updated version shows a general price increase of between 70 and 100%. This leaves many wannabe miners trolling online for the best deals on new or even second-hand cards. Buying older cards though means slower computing ability which reduces the profitability of a rig.

Rigs using, for example, a high-end Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080 ti card costing around $1,300 (MSRP) can earn as much as $10 dollars a day at current crypto values. This means that the card may pay for itself in about 4 months.

String the math out and it’s easy to see how a fair sized rig can make a very nice profit over a year or more. Retailers reported a dip in demand for the cards during the crypto market correction but now that Bitcoin and it’s like are on the rise sellers and manufacturers are looking for demand to reach and surpass 2017.

Author JMCMAHON • FEB 21, 2018 • 05:02

Posted by David Ogden Entrepreneur
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Doge Is Helping Ethereum Solve Its Biggest Issue

A cryptocurrency modeled after a dog meme is proving yet again it's not just a joke.

Created on a whim in 2013, dogecoin isn't simply still around, it's playing a crucial role in the ongoing testing of at least one "serious" technology. In fact, on February 5, it notably factored into an experiment that successfully showcased one of ethereum's more enterprising projects.

On that date, the much-anticipated technology truebit successfully sent dogecoin to ethereum's Rinkeby testnet, where it became a distinct asset on that blockchain. A historic first, the transaction marked the completion of a years-long project developers see as a stepping stone toward the interoperability of crypto assets more broadly.

Nicknamed the "dogethereum bridge," the test also marks the first real release for truebit, which aims to solve one of ethereum's biggest problems: scalability.

In short, the smart contract platform can't support many users right now. Indeed, because of all the data ethereum needs to store in its globally distributed database, it requires more than three times as much data as bitcoin, and that's making it more difficult for users to run.

Though truebit is lesser-known than scaling solutions like raiden and sharding, the technology is perhaps more ambitious because it's designed to scale any type of ethereum computation, rather than just transactions. This is key, since ethereum bills itself as more than "just" a financial cryptocurrency.

In the long run, truebit wants to scale video, machine learning or just about any computation you can think of, and dogethereum is the first use case, so far.

Truebit co-founder Jason Teutsch:

"We built a first version of that, which we're calling 'truebit lite.' It demonstrates that all the core pieces of truebit work. It's a big milestone for us."

$1 million on the line

Backing up, the history of dogethereum is an interesting one.

In the heyday of dogecoin (back when its thriving community could pool together $30,000 in donations to fund a bobsled team), Ethereum Foundation UX designer Alex Van de Sande got together with other developers and set a bounty to incentivize someone to come up with a way to move coins from dogecoin to ethereum and back.

The group locked up the funds in a DAO, a kind of application that runs on ethereum, enabling money to be spent only once specific rules are met. In this instance, the funds were set to only be released if five of the DAO leaders vote to do so by signing approval with their ethereum private keys.

Since the price of ethereum ballooned over the years, the smart contract holds ether worth about $1.2 million today. But no one's received the bounty so far, primarily because running dogethereum in an efficient way has proven to be a much more difficult problem to solve than expected, as Van de Sande pointed out in a string of tweets describing the project's origins.

The heart of the issue is it's too computationally expensive to validate a coin going from one chain to another – and back again – costing millions of dollars in ether. In order to solve this problem, it needs to be less expensive to run computations on the ethereum blockchain.

"This [bounty] kicked off a two- or three-year discussion about how best to implement it," said truebit developer Sina Habibian, adding:

"Dogethereum is representative of a larger problem of how to run big computations."

And dogethereum is how truebit was born – the seemingly silly bridge sparking Ethereum Foundation developer and truebit co-author Christian Reitwiessner's interest in designing a scalability layer on top of ethereum.

The big test

Truebit developers might be getting close to snatching the dogethereum bounty, though, since some successful tests on the Rinkeby copy of the ethereum blockchain have been executed.

The only other step is doing it live.

Truebit built a dogecoin light client, a smaller version of the blockchain that slashes most of the historical data, embedding it in the doge relay so it can securely move coins from chain to chain.

Yet, Truebit's developers stressed the challenging aspect of what they've accomplished, arguing that the dogethereum bridge is different than decentralized exchange via atomic swaps, an idea that's been gaining ground of late. Rather, it's more like sidechains, a long-stalled bitcoin technology.

"We want to actually pull coins off of the dogecoin blockchain and put them onto ethereum in the form of ERC-20 tokens," Teutsch explained. "And be able to move them back."

"You don't need a counterparty. You're doing this completely on your own," Habibian added.

To accomplish this, there has to be some way of locking coins on dogecoin so that they cannot be spent until they are sent back from ethereum. But that's not the most difficult part. What remains computationally expensive is proving that the owner of the dogecoin owns the ether coins on the other side.

They then executed a transaction on the Rinkeby testnet, sending the dogecoin to ethereum – and back again – using truebit under the hood, so the normally expensive proof is executed off-chain, in a much cheaper way.

No estimates

Despite the public debut for the scaling project, though, the team behind truebit still has their work cut out for them.

In this first version of the technology, the incentives are "greatly simplified," Habibian said.

In the technology they have ready today, some of the participants are behaving "altruistically." That is, the system's verifiers are performing expensive computations just to be nice.

And while that probably wouldn't work in practice, truebit's goal is to one day create a marketplace where participants are paid for doing computational work on their computers and contributing correct results.

"People will come out of their own self-interest to run these computations and make money in return," Habibian said.

So, when will all that be ready exactly? Habibian wouldn't give an estimate for how long it will take to launch for real on ethereum.

"It's always hard to make estimates like that because one of the rules of software engineering is, 'However long you think something's going to take, it'll take three times as long,'" he said.

Still, he revealed truebit plans to release new software programs iterating on this milestone in the coming months now that the startup has teamed up with decentralization startup Aragon and ethereum-based video service LivePeer.

That's how they think the technology will spread at first, beyond dogethereum, marking a big step for truebit – and potentially ethereum too.

As Habibian told CoinDesk

"When it's done and it's fully built, you'll be able to run any computation on ethereum."

Author Alyssa Hertig Updated Feb 19, 2018 at 03:41 UTC

Posted by Daviid Ogden Entrepreneur
David Ogden Cryptocurrency Entrepreneur

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CFTC Warns Against Cryptocurrency Pump-and-dump Schemes

The rising popularity of cryptocurrencies is of great concern. Especially when it comes to pump-and-dump schemes, there’s reason to be concerned. As such, the CFTC issued an official warning against this type of market manipulation. They advise customers to avoid such schemes, especially when it comes to small and new altcoin markets. It is evident doing one’s research is always the best course of action.

In the world of cryptocurrency, pump-and-dump schemes are nothing new. In fact, they are a lot more common than some people might think. The CFTC has issued an official warning on this topic earlier this week. This is quite a surprise, even though it is evident consumers need to be aware of these manipulative efforts. Especially smaller cap coins and new alternative cryptocurrencies pose a significant risk in this regard. Moreover, it is always best to avoid any promotion on social media altogether.

Avoiding Cryptocurrency Pump-and-dump Schemes

This seems to stem forth from the recent BitConnect issues. That pump-and-dump scheme caused hundreds of millions in financial losses. It was mainly promoted on social media and YouTube. The CFTC doesn’t want history to repeat itself in this regard. They now want consumers to blow the whistle on any suspicious currencies first and foremost. It’s always better to submit tips than ignore pump-and-dump schemes altogether. Whether or not the general public will follow this guideline, remains to be seen.

According to the CFTC, pump-and-dump schemes in the cryptocurrency world take place on social media first and foremost. Online chat rooms, such as the ones on Telegram, are also problematic in this regard. Ignoring these buy signals will prove to be rather difficult for a lot of novice users. It is these people the marketers and scammers prey on first and foremost. A lot of people never do any research for specific coins or projects, even though they really should.

For now, the CFTC will not undertake further action against pump-and-dump schemes. They are not in a position to do so either, unfortunately. It is evident users need to conduct their due diligence first and foremost. Those who purposefully defraud other investors will face legal issues sooner or later, though. Anyone participating in market manipulation also violates the law. It is evident this new financial industry needs some boundaries first and foremost. Cracking down on pump-and-dumps is the right way to go in this regard.

Author JP BUNTINX • FEB 18, 2018 • 03:02

Posted by David Ogden Entrepreneur
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Prices Aside, Crypto’s Tech Stack Is Steadily Improving

Prices Aside, Crypto's Tech Stack Is Steadily Improving

Rachel Rose O'Leary and Alyssa Hertig

Feb 11, 2018 at 14:45 UTC

A look at the headlines of late may leave you with a familiar conclusion – with all the ups and downs in the market, it's just too early to take crypto seriously.

And it's true, despite the best efforts of even the industry's most notable developers, the world's largest cryptocurrencies remain not just volatile, but difficult (and risky) to use, at least in a way that their creators' intended.

Still, heading into 2018, enthusiasts the world over are hard at work on improvements.

As such, there's optimism advances could start to compound, creating a user experience that finally starts to transcend the issues – namely, the high fees and long wait times – users of most blockchains have become all too accustomed to.

In fact, in the year ahead, blockchain users could see exciting new features and scientific firsts that just might help push the industry closer to that vision:

1. Off-chain channels

What if it was possible for blockchain-based transactions to avoid using the blockchain at all?

That's the big idea behind off-blockchain payment channels, an idea that harkens back to 2015, but whose time may have finally come this year. Most associated with Bitcoin's Lightning Network, the idea is actually more general than this specific instance.

Essentially, off-blockchain payment channels would allow two people using any one cryptocurrency to send small payments back and forth, settling to the blockchain (and dealing with its high fees and slow transaction times) only when absolutely necessary.

Due to the potential impact, the idea is catching on – ethereum developers, while they often don't see eye-to-eye with their bitcoin peers, are at work on the same type of solution.

But there's more than just a rivalry at play, there's also reason to believe 2018 might be different in that actual live transactions could be sent in significant numbers.

The developers behind bitcoin's Lightning Network have declared the technology almost ready based on successful tests. Meanwhile, ethereum's developers have also unveiled successful tests for their versions of the concept, Raiden Network, with a more ambitious version, Plasma, potentially around the corner.

2. Real-live staking

As their popularity grows, attention is also being paid to the electricity required to sustain cryptocurrencies.

While the relevant data is difficult to pin down, proof-of-work, the consensus protocol that underlies bitcoin mining, is best defined as an energy-intensive process. As such, there are concerns about its electricity use could have large-scale environmental effects.

This is leading to new research on an idea from 2011. Called proof-of-stake, or "consensus by vote," the idea has been implemented, however, not at the scale intended by ethereum.

As such, it's long-awaited project Casper is likely to be under significant scrutiny this coming year, and early versions are beginning to see the light.

In a testnet released on New Year's Eve, one variation of Casper, was claimed to be functional. Karl Floersch, a leading developer behind the technology, told CoinDesk at the time that the code is working with "no hiccups."

Work remains to adapt this early version of Casper across the different ethereum clients, but ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin has said he expects the technology will be tested alongside proof-of-work sometime in the future.

3. Privacy advances

Privacy has been a somewhat neglected promise in the majority of blockchains, but it's nonetheless an issue that could see improvement this year.

Most notable is the advances in zero-knowledge proofs, what Buterin has called "the single most under-hyped thing in cryptography right now," are getting cheaper and easier to deploy.

A form of cryptography that hides information without risking validity, it's already been adapted to a small degree into ethereum, which could lead to a wave of startups experimenting with private smart contracts in novel and unexpected ways.

Plus, in a white paper published earlier this month, a system for achieving zero-knowledge without compromising trust – a point of contention in some earlier iterations of the tech – was released, an update which could have exciting consequences.

And as existing tech matures, privacy-centric cryptocurrencies such as monero and zcash are also set to improve.

In preparation for an upgrade, zcash has been steadily reinforcing its security, while monero is stepping up to implement "bulletproofs," a feature that could cut fees by 80 percent.

4. Decentralized exchanges

No, this isn't just a new version of Coinbase or Kraken.

As the industry's largest exchanges struggle to cope with the influx of new adopters, an increasing number of projects are at work developing something called a decentralized exchange. The term denotes not just a new browser-based exchange, but rather a type of software users can use to swap one cryptocurrency with another without a central entity.

2017 saw a flood of new decentralized exchange projects, such as ShapeShift's Prism, 0x, OmiseGo, Kyber Network, and many others.

Expect those efforts to accelerate this year.

So far, hardware wallet Ledger has already integrated with decentralized exchange Radar Relay, allowing users to trustlessly exchange tokens based on ethereum.

While functionality is limited (it's only supported by a single wallet and only ethereum-based tokens can be sent), many in the industry see it as a glimpse into the future of not just cryptocurrency exchanges, but the technology itself.

Posted By David Ogden Entrepreneur
David ogden Cryptocurrency entrepreneur

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Why Employers Can’t Pay You in Cryptocurrency

Why Employers Can't Pay You in Cryptocurrency

With the help from recent news headlines

chronicling the substantial increase of some cryptocurrencies, more members of the public are discovering what people who’ve dealt with digital currencies like Bitcoin already knew. Although volatility is constant, it is possible to become wealthy with Bitcoin and similar non-physical forms of money. So you might be wondering, why isn’t it possible for your workplace to pay your wages in cryptocurrency? Some employers actually do – we’ll cover those later. But first, let’s discuss four barriers that make widespread adoption of that payment method difficult.

Some laws specify cash or check payments only

One of the main federal regulations that cover employee wages in the US is the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). It stipulates that employers must meet at least some of their minimum-wage requirements by paying workers with cash or checks – as of now, Bitcoin payments don’t apply and the same is true for overtime compensation.

However, outside those federal requirements for minimum wage and overtime, employers and workers can agree on other forms of payment if desired. Employers could theoretically pay employees partially with cash or checks, then give them supplementary amounts made up of cryptocurrencies. The system isn’t so straightforward in certain states, though. For example, Delaware and Texas are two of several states where wages can only be comprised of US currency.

Cryptocurrencies may be deemed securities

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a statement about cryptocurrencies to remind people that investments associated with them can quickly cross into other geographical boundaries without owners’ knowledge, which increases the possible risk. Also, the SEC may ultimately decide some cryptocurrencies are designated as securities. In that case, employers would have to comply with additional laws for securities in addition to the wage-related rules mentioned above.

Employers could feel wary

The rapid fluctuations in value associated with Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies may make employers balk at the idea of paying their workers through these non-traditional means. Similarly, they might feel that not enough merchants accept cryptocurrencies as payment yet, even as the number grows.

However, a BitPay debit card allows people to convert amounts from their cryptocurrency wallets into dollars in minutes. People can then use the more widely accepted currency anywhere that accepts Visa. This capability takes care of the potential issue of someone having cryptocurrency but not being able to spend it. The card also offers a safeguard if cryptocurrency holders learn about market conditions that signal a likely, sudden drop in value. In such a scenario, people could quickly make conversions using the card to avoid holding onto large amounts of cryptocurrency that could lose substantial worth in a few days or less.

The tax implications vary by country

If an employer regularly hires remote workers who are legal residents in one country and pay taxes in other, the different ways countries view cryptocurrencies for tax purposes could also be a barrier to adoption. In Canada, for instance, the country views cryptocurrency earnings as barter transactions. Companies based in the US have to convert cryptocurrency values to dollar amounts for the IRS on the dates payments occur. Similarly, employees must report all earnings in dollars, even when earned as Bitcoins or another currency.

Depending on the respective countries, reporting cryptocurrency earnings for tax purposes could be a straightforward process. However, companies with large percentages of international workers may decide that figuring out the logistics requires too much time-consuming research. If that happens, workers who strongly desire cryptocurrency payments could offer to find out the details and report back to their employers.

Some companies do pay employees with cryptocurrency

Despite the challenges we’ve presented, pioneer companies do exist that pay their employees in cryptocurrencies. Notably, none of the businesses are within the US, so some of the issues you learned about above may not apply to them. Geographical differences aside, if a growing number of companies around the world conclude that cryptocurrency payments for employees make sense, it could encourage other entities to follow suit.

Starting in February, GMO Internet, a Japanese company, will give portions of employee salaries in Bitcoin. Employees will be able to receive the equivalent of $890 per month in Bitcoins. A representative of the company said the move to offer Bitcoins as salary was intended to make the company at large more literate about how cryptocurrencies work. Another business to consider is Buffer, a company associated with social-media tools that save time and grow traffic. It pays one of its developers, who reside in South Africa, a portion of his salary in Bitcoins. In this case, the employee is a big believer in the potential of Bitcoins. As such, he wanted to receive five percent of his wages in the currency.

The man approached a payment associate that works with Buffer and began a dialogue, later completing research to find a company that specializes in payroll services related to cryptocurrencies. He’s a good example of an employee who was proactive and got positive results even though the company was not offering widespread cryptocurrency payments. If a business is already in the cryptocurrency market, they might even ask employees during the hiring process whether they’ll accept non-physical payments. That situation happened at Bitedge, a sports betting establishment based in Australia. The company’s web developers receive 100 percent of their income in Bitcoins.

The future is bright

If you’re eager to explore the possibility of getting paid in cryptocurrency, it’s crucial to be aware of the volatility associated with cryptocurrency values, as well as the possibility that employers may not be up to speed about digital forms of payment. They might require you to research the specifics and provide guidance. As cryptocurrencies become more prominent, finding ways to overcome these and other challenges get easier. You can strengthen your stance as an early, in-the-know adopter and get involved in what could eventually revolutionize the way employers give compensation.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept
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General Manager of BIS Wants To Prevent Crypto From Joining âMain Financial System’/More

General Manager of BIS Wants To Prevent Crypto From Joining ‘Main Financial System’

Augustín Carstens, the general manager of the Bank for International Settlements

(BIS), called Bitcoin a “combination of a bubble, a Ponzi scheme and an environmental disaster” and asked central banks to more closely regulate cryptocurrencies during a speech at Goethe University on Feb. 6. BIS is known as the “bank for central banks,” for it only provides banking services to central banks and other international organizations. In August 2017, when Carstens was the head of the central Bank of Mexico, he argued that Bitcoin is not a currency but a commodity and warned against its potential use for cybercrime.

Carsten’s recent comments Tuesday morning come after both the traditional and crypto markets have been experiencing a large drop since Monday, Feb. 5. Also this week, several large banks, including Lloyds Banking Group and J.P. Morgan Chase, banned credit card purchases of cryptocurrencies. In Carsten’s opinion, the global interest in cryptocurrencies is just a “speculative mania” and thus strict regulation by

central banks is needed:

“If authorities do not act pre-emptively, cryptocurrencies could become more interconnected with the main financial system and become a threat to financial stability.”

Carsten considers it “alarming” that some banks are releasing Bitcoin ATMs, for he considers Bitcoin’s potential use for illegal transactions too high to allow the currency to be associated with mainstream

financial institutions:

“If the only ‘business case’ is use for illicit or illegal transactions, central banks cannot allow such tokens to rely on much of the same institutional infrastructure that serves the overall financial system and freeload on the trust that it provides.”

The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and Elliptic, a Bitcoin forensics company, released a report in late January that showed that less than one percent of all Bitcoin transactions represented money laundering.

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UAE Issues Warning On ICOs, Says Investors Should Assume Full Risk

A new document issued by the UAE Securities and Commodities

Authority (SCA) on Sunday, Feb. 4 warns investors about the risks of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). In the document, the SCA emphasizes that investors involved in ICO fundraising campaigns have to assume all associated risks, given that digital token-based fundraising activities are not regulated by the UAE, and no legal protection can be provided in cases of fraud.

The major risks, as pointed out by the SCA, include high volatility of ICO tokens on secondary markets, misleading or unaudited details in ICO offerings, as well as common unawareness of potential costs and gains shared by most retail investors. Moreover, the SCA mentioned the risks of investing in foreign ICOs, commenting that it may be difficult to verify the proper regulatory compliance of such fundraisers and track the invested money as it leaves the UAE.

This is the second time that the country’s government warns its citizens about the risks of ICOs as back in Oct. 2017, Abu Dhabi's Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) issued its guidelines on both ICOs and cryptocurrencies.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept
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Crypto Has What it Takes to Break the Flawed Financial System

Bitcoin, when it first hit the presses in its own white paper,

was heralded as this peer-to-peer cashless system that could revolutionize the financial world and break the shackles of banking hegemony. However, as the cryptocurrency market has evolved, it has attracted a new crop of investors and speculators who have strayed somewhat from its original purpose, rather happy to cash in on the unprecedented gains which attracted them in the first place. Really, those entering the crypto economy should be doing so for the right reason, reveling in the potential it holds to be a disruptive technology, rather than a quick get rich scheme.

The flawed financial system

A look at the generations shows how today’s generation is sitting under the yoke of a financial service sector that was set up by the baby boomers, who still run the central banks. The end of the Second World War in 1945 sparked a new revolution of banking, but that system still remains nearly totally intact.

This system of banking and finance is dated and obsolete, and not even functioning properly, with a number of major crashes sending the globe into dire straits on a few occasions; the 1987 crash, the 2000 dotcom bubble burst and 2008 global financial crisis all down to a broken system. There is huge amounts of skepticism that has been born from being put under the financial quash that was built by generations before. Millenials are now starting to fight back and ask why things are the way they are, and what can they do to change it.

Blockchain revolution

The technology of the Blockchain is revolutionary, not only in name but in nature too. Those who understand the technology behind Bitcoin know what cryptocurrencies can become. But, those who only understand that Bitcoin has a chance of doubling its value every three months, are pushing it into bubble territory. The evidence is there though, the threat that Blockchain and cryptocurrencies pose can be seen in the way in which most central banks and regulators are reacting to it, knowing their monopoly is under threat.

But as it stands, even with the exponential expanding of the crypto community, which is also an intellectual expansion, there needs to be a balancing out of the financial speculators, and the technological innovators. When Bitcoin was chugging towards making fiat currency obsolete, it was doing so with a much lower number of users who were more focused on the technology. Now, as the network has swelled, the direction of Bitcoin, as the lead example, has changed, and the community is a different demographic.

Useless digital gold?

Bitcoin is in a precarious position. It is the most popular and well known, and thus the most likely to be disruptive in any sense of the word, but it has gone down a pretty useless path in terms of revolution. The fact that Bitcoin is an asset, a store of value – digital gold – because of its scaling issue and other reasons, makes it much less of a revolutionary, more of a bloated get rich quick scheme. This is not the fault of the coin, the technology or those driving its development, and it is the fault of those who use it for the wrong reasons.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept
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