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Topics - mlawson71

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News related to Crypto / AFM Warns Against Retail Crypto Investments

« on: December 27, 2021, 04:12:43 PM »

The Dutch financial regulator, AFM (Autoriteit Financiële Markten) recently issued an official warning against trading and investing in crypto-based assets.
According to the regulator, people should not invest money into short or long-term crypto investment opportunities. This is not the first time the agency has issued such a warning – the regulator has made its position known since 2017.
According to the regulator, cryptos carry inherent risks, such as collapsing in value, their sheer complexity and no cohesive regulation, to name a few. The agency also said that although they are not able to over the cryptocurrency market as they do other, more regulated markets, they are still careful to observe the current trends in the digical currency industry.
Even more importantly, the regulator pointed out that major changes are expected to occur in 2024, when the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR) is implemented.
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Financial regulators are often nervous about cryptos, and they have a good reason to be. The lack of regulation can be a major problem for the industry.

Crypto Exchanges / AscendEX Crypto Exchange Hacked for $77 mln

« on: December 16, 2021, 04:07:06 PM »

AscendAE, which is based in Singapore and was previously known as Bitmax, announced that they got hacked – apparently a hacker gained access to one of their hot wallets and made off with some 77 million US dollars.
According to a statement by the company, the exchange then transferred assets that were not affected by the hack to cold wallets and began an investigation. They also assured everyone affected by this breach in security that they would be fully compensated.
They also stated that they detected a number of unauthorized transactions from one of its hot wallets on December 11th.
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Such hacks and scams are one of the biggest drawbacks of the cryptocurrency industry, unfortunately.

Binance / Binance to seek FCA approval

« on: December 13, 2021, 04:36:10 PM »

One of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, Binance, got banned by the FCA a few months ago, but clearly they have not given up on the idea of operating in the UK at all, because recently the company’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao announced during an interview that they intend to seek a license from the above-mentioned regulator.
According to his words, they aim to become a registered crypto asset firm in the UK in six to eighteen months.
“We’re making a number of very substantial changes in organizational structures, product offerings, our internal processes and the way we work with regulators,” Zhao also said and then continued “we want to continue to establish a presence in the U.K. and serve U.K. users in a fully licensed and fully compliant manner.”
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I think with enough changes they will likely get that license, it's probably just a matter of time.

News related to Crypto / Bitcoin transaction volume surpasses that of PayPal

« on: December 01, 2021, 03:48:55 PM »

According to recent data, for the first time in history the average quarterly volume of transactions in USD recorded on the Bitcoin network surpassed the volume processed by online payments giant PayPal.
According to said data, this year the Bitcoin network processed an estimate average of 489 billion USD per quarter and PayPal processed 302 billion USD, which means that Bitcoin surpassed it by some 62%!
That said, the Bitcoin transaction volume still pales in comparison to the amounts processed by payment providers like Visa and MasterCard this year, which sit around 3,2 trillion and 1,8 respectively.
It is expected, however, that by 2026 Bitcoin will surpass both of them.
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Given this report it’s no wonder all the companies are jumping on the Bitcoin bandwagon.

News related to Crypto / Leading crypto investment firms back Staking Rewards with $3.2 mln

« on: November 29, 2021, 05:16:36 PM »

Staking Rewards, which is a popular interest-comparison site for crypto in the growing Staking and Defi space, recently announced that they have successfully raised 3 million CHF (3,2 mln. USD) from three leading crypto investment firms – Galaxy Digital, CoinShares, and Digital Currency Group (DCG).
“This investment round will mark the next step for us to provide the highest quality data and research around staking, as well as building industry- leading financial products,” said co-founder and CEO Mirko Schmiedl in a press release.
According to the company’s statement, this new investment will allow them to develop a a new suite of products and services that will cater to the staking space, which includes the development of investable staking index products.
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Innovations in the crypto industry never cease to amaze me, I admit.

News related to Crypto / Reformed AML Rules Adopted by Israel Authorities for Crypto

« on: November 22, 2021, 03:57:50 PM »

According to recent reports about the crypto industry in Israel, soon all crypto assets will fall from now on under anti-money laundering regulations. Israel’s Authority for Combating Terror Financing and Money Laundering has apparently increased its effort to fight the emerging money laundering cases that use cryptocurrency assets.
The agency is planning on monitoring Bitcoin assets, Ethereum coins, financial technology firms, and further financial products of importance. Its director, Shlomit Wegman, insists that these new rules will be implemented to ensure more safety and security for everyone.
The popularity of cryptocurrencies in Israel has increased immensely, and authorities are taking a more stringent approach against crypto-related crime as a result of that.
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Personally, I am always of the opinion that strict but fair regulation is a good thing for any industry.

News related to Crypto / “SQUID” Coin Revealed as Fraud

« on: November 12, 2021, 03:24:51 PM »

Who hasn’t heard of the tv series Squid Game these days? Unfortunately, some scammers decided to capitalize on its popularity – the new crypto asset SQUID, named, as you can imagine, after the tv show, turned out to be a total hoax, as well as a 3.38 million USD fraud. That was revealed when its price dropped to zero earlier this month.
SQUID, coasting on the tv show’s popularity, was priced at 2.850 USD per coin, which was a shocking 75,000% increase in pricing. Soon after that, however, its price crashed to 0.002 USD. Said crash apparently occurred over the course of just a few minutes.
Users started complaining that they could not sell it on PancakeSwap, which was the only (decentralized) exchange that liquidates SQUID.
Soon after that there was a warning that the coin was rigged, and there was evidence of that as well.
The creators of the coin falsely claimed that it was both inspired by and endorsed by the IP (which it was not), and also falsely claimed that SQUID has been upgraded with an ‘anti-dumping technology’, essentially preventing holders of the coin to sell against lowered demand.
While the scam was happening said creators were not online, their social media presence was false and now the SQUID site is gone.
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That's why I tend to avoid meme currencies, one never knows which one would be the next Dogecoin or the next Squid coin.

News related to Crypto / Australia’s largest commercial bank to offer crypto currency trading

« on: November 04, 2021, 04:01:38 PM »

In a revolutionary move one of the four largest banks in Australia, the Commonwealth Bank (CBA) has announced that it will allow its customers to buy and sell crypto currencies on its platform, establishing a precedent in the banking sector in the country.
This service will apparently be available to CommBank app users – and there are more than 6.5 million of them. They will be able to use the app to trade Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin, as well as ten more major digital coins.
The bank announced that it will partner with New York- based exchange Gemini Trust Company LLC to offer these services.
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I think this is a major turning point for the industry, like El Salvador's decision to implement Bitcoin as a legal tender was.

News related to Crypto / 200 Walmart Stores to Offer BTC ATM Machines

« on: October 28, 2021, 03:59:42 PM »

The big American retail giant Walmart and Coinstar have partnered up to deploy some 200 Bitcoin ATM machines in Walmart stores across the US. As a result of this coalition, Walmart’s customers would be able to buy BTC from various Walmart stores.
To use the ATM they would need to insert bills and then receive a voucher that can only be redeemed after they have signed up with Coinme and passed a background check.
A statement by Sam Doctor, the Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Research at BitOoda to Bloomberg, confirmed the presence of those 200 Coinstar booths. According to his comments Walmart joins the BTC ATM trend after other stores have already done the same and that will “further legitimacy among skeptics”.
This piece of news, by the way, comes after the fake news that Walmart would start accepting Litecoin as a payment method.
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I do think this is great news for Bitcoin, that such a massive and established retail giant has entered such a partnership.

News related to Crypto / Facebook Rebranded Cryptowallet – Novi – Faces Backlash

« on: October 25, 2021, 03:17:21 PM »

Facebook announced that they would be launching a pilot of their newly branded Novi cryptocurrency wallet and immediately came under fire from various US lawmakers. The company had partnered with Coinbase to pilot Novi through the exchange’s Coinbase Custdody feature. Shortly after the launch, however, US lawmakers sent a personal letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that read: “Facebook cannot be trusted to manage a payment system or digital currency when its existing ability to manage risks and keep consumers safe has proven wholly insufficient,”
The Facebook-Diem league responded, however, that Diem is not Facebook and that senators and other government officials had apparently greatly misunderstood the relationship between Diem and Facebook, since Diem is an independent organization, and the Diem Association includes Facebook as a major partner among 20 other different partners.
For now Novi continues to exist.
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I have always found it fascinating, the kind of pushback Facebook faces every time they mention their crypto projects.

News related to Crypto / Crypto Enforcement Team Formed by US Department of Justice

« on: October 07, 2021, 02:57:49 PM »

The US Department of Justice has formed a formal anti-cryptocurrency crime group that they named the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET). This group will be responsible for cryptocurrency crime investigations, together with various money laundering operations connected to digital currency exchanges. NCET will be chaired by General Kenneth A. Polite Jr, the US Assistant Attorney.
This newly established team will be a joint effort between the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section (MLARS).
NCET will apparently be providing the needed support when tracing and recovering cryptos which have been lost to scammers. According to the DOJ, they will also be recuperating funds paid to ransomware communities.
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With cryptocurrency popularity rising more than ever before, such a group was probably necessary.

News related to Crypto / For the First Time: Swiss Cryptocurrency Fund Approved by FINMA

« on: September 30, 2021, 03:25:17 PM »

The Swiss financial regulator FINMA announced that has just approved its first cryptocurrency fund. Said fund is named Crypto Market Index Fund and will apparently only be allowed to “qualified investors”.
FINMA issued the following statement: “For the first time, FINMA has approved a Swiss fund that invests primarily in cryptocurrency assets, that is to say in assets based on the blockchain or distributed ledger technology”.
FINMA also stated that innovation is the way to go, but that they also strive to apply the already existing market laws and follow the “same risk, same rules” policy. According to the agency, this approach “makes sure that new technologies are not being used to circumvent the existing rules and that the protective goals of financial market legislation are preserved.”
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I think it is fantastic that Switzerland, of all places, has become accepting of cryptos. This is a big win for the industry.

News related to Crypto / South Korean FSC Head Wishes to Resolve Pressing Crypto Matters

« on: September 21, 2021, 03:55:48 PM »

The head of the South Korean financial regulator Financial Service Commission (FSC), Koh Seung-beom, recently announced that cryptocurrency issues in the country should be resolved soon. He has stated multiple times already that he wishes to stabilize the cryptocurrency markets in the country, which is a major crypto hub.
According to Koh Seung-beom, the faster the issues are resolved, the smaller the impact on the market would be.
Many South Korean politicians have referred to the crypto industry as a “bubble” which can burst at any given time and create many regulatory and other issues for their country.
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Politicians often worry cryptos are a bubble, but so far no such thing has really happened.

News related to Crypto / New Crypto-Asset Service Providers Policy Issued by CySEC

« on: September 18, 2021, 02:31:57 PM »

The Cypriot financial regulator CySEC (Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission) released a newly drafted policy regarding crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) that will cover the specific operations of these entities as well as their registration process.
According to this new policy, cryptocurrency assets will either qualify as Electronic Money under the Electronic Money Law or as financial instruments under the Investment Services and Activities and Regulated Markets Law. The final qualification will end on the nature of the business.
What is more, according to the same policy, the crypto-based assets can be a digital rep of a value not issued by a central bank, nor by any public authority.
CASPs will also have to cooperate with the latest AML and CFT rules. This includes:
•   operational requirements
•   organizational requirements
•   measures in due diligence
•   economic profiling of customers
•   organizations of funds and their original source
This move by the regulator actually pushes the istributed ledger technology (DLT) into the mainstream, although the regulator did point out the risks involved in it, for example, tech adoption and standardization, governance predicaments, scalability, abiding by existing regulations, and others.
Previously, Malta and Gibraltar issued similar regulations.
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Regulation is always better than a total ban, I think.

Coinbase / Coinbase “caught off guard” after SEC threatens with legal action

« on: September 14, 2021, 02:58:20 PM »

Coinbase’s shares dropped with some 3.2% after it turned out that the American regulator Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) intends to take an enforcement action against the crypto exchange over an interest-earning product that the exchange was planning to launch in the coming weeks.
Coinbase has apparently received a notice by SEC which prompted them to delay the launch of the product until at least October.
The product that caused the kerfuffle is called Lend and is, according to Coinbase, esigned to allow users to earn a 4% annual percentage yield on a stable coin called USD Coin. The exchange says that this could be done by lending clients’ funds to verified borrowers. SEC apparently intends to sue Coinbase over this.
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I am curious to see whether they will manage to clear that regulatory hurdle or they will have to drop this product altogether.