Following the day the Tesla founder, Elon Musk, added the Bitcoin hashtag to his Twitter profile, the popular Carolina Panthers offensive tackle, Russell Okung told his social media followers to put the Bitcoin hashtag in their bio. Okung has managed to get hundreds of people to do it, but more recently the NFL player started a decent train of celebrities with very large Twitter follower counts to join the bandwagon too.
Russell Okung: ‘Plant the Flag to Declare You’re Ready for the Future’
Last week, Elon Musk put the Bitcoin hashtag in his Twitter bio, and after he did that, the price of bitcoin (BTC) coincidently saw significant gains. Musk also tweeted, “In retrospect, it was inevitable,” and a great number of crypto supporters celebrated the Tesla founder’s social media teases. After Musk did this on Twitter, the NFL player who plays offensive tackle for the Carolina Panthers, Russell Okung told his Twitter followers to follow Musk’s recent move.
“Everyone put #Bitcoin in your bio,” Okung tweeted. “Plant the flag to declare you’re ready for the future. Send me a screenshot so I know it’s real,” the football player wrote. The football player is also well known for recently telling the world that he chose to take half of his U.S. 13 million-dollar NFL salary in bitcoin payments.
“Getting paid in bitcoin is the first step of opting out of the corrupt, manipulated economy we all inhabit,” Okung explained at the time.
Following the popular NFL star’s tweet, Okung got over 2.3k in Twitter responses and a large number of screenshots. A great number of screenshots stemmed from hardcore cryptocurrency supporters and also a myriad of average people too.
Furthermore, Okung managed to get a great number of celebrity names to participate in the Bitcoin hashtag bio trend as well. Okung has also been tweeting about some of the well known celebs joining in on planting the Bitcoin hashtag flag in their Twitter bios.
Some of the individuals included the spiritual guru Sofia Hayat, Westbrook Media’s Brad Haugen, Mr Beast, the singer Joy Villa, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Skybridge Capital’s Anthony Scaramucci, and many more. Every one of the celebs has well over 100k Twitter followers or a whole lot more. “Salute to those building a decentralized future.”
Okung further tweeted on Saturday. “The message is clear: We’re not here to play a part, we’re here to take over,” the Carolina Panthers offensive tackle added. The following day, Okung also tweeted a disdainful message toward the ‘Great Reset’ agenda.
“You will own nothing, and you will be happy,” Okung tweeted referring to the November 2016 World Economic Forum (WEF) tweet that originally stems from a prediction made by a member of Danish parliament, Ida Auken. “Now translated as: ‘We will own everything, and you will let us,’” the NFL player Okung said on Sunday morning.
What do you think about all the celebrities joining Okung’s call to put the #Bitcoin hashtag in their social media profiles? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
A chief economist at UBS, the largest bank in Switzerland, says cryptocurrency has a fundamental flaw. Bitcoin’s fixed supply could cause the collapse of its value and spending power, making it unattractive to use as a currency, he claims.
A UBS Chief Economist Says Bitcoin’s Fixed Supply Is a ‘Fundamental Flaw’
Paul Donovan, Chief Economist of UBS Global Wealth Management, explained last week why people won’t want to use bitcoin as a currency. UBS is the largest bank in Switzerland.
“The debate about bitcoin and other crypto tends to be very passionate. Crypto supporters say that economists are just dinosaurs, and economists say that crypto supporters are just selling a bubble.” He also pointed out that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been volatile in price terms.
“If we look objectively at the issue, I think an important question is whether bitcoin and other crypto could be currencies,” the UBS chief economist continued, emphasizing, “And, I don’t think that they can.”
He explained that “One of the key reasons for that is that a currency has to be a stable store of value. With a proper currency, you got a genuine certainty that the basket of goods you can buy today is going to be the same as the basket of goods that you can buy tomorrow.”
However, he asserted that “With bitcoin and other crypto, you don’t have that certainty.” The UBS chief economist explained:
It’s all down to a rather fundamental flaw with crypto. In order to achieve stable spending power, a store of value, the balance of supply and demand needs to be maintained.
“So, if demand for proper currency goes down, the central bank can reduce supply, maintaining the balance and therefore maintaining spending power,” the UBS chief economist opined. However, he did not differentiate between cryptocurrencies with a fixed supply, like bitcoin, and other coins without a fixed supply, including stablecoins.
Donovan continued:
But if demand for crypto goes down, and self-evidently it does, the supply cannot go down to maintain balance. So, the value, and the spending power, immediately collapses.
“It might collapse for a short period of time or it might collapse for a long period of time. But people are unlikely to want to use something as a currency if they got absolutely no certainty about what they can buy with that tomorrow,” he concluded.
Many financial strategists, on the other hand, have said that bitcoin’s volatility falls as adoption increases. Fidelity recently pointed out that BTC’s volatility is down about 50% from a few years ago. In July, BTC’s volatility hit a three-year low. Billionaire investor Bill Miller said bitcoin becomes less risky the higher the price goes.
UBS recently published guidance on bitcoin investing. “While we wouldn’t rule out further price increases,” the bank warned: “We are also cognizant of the real risk of one losing one’s entire investment. Investors in cryptocurrencies must therefore limit the size of their investments to an amount they can afford to lose.”
What do you think about the UBS economist’s view on bitcoin? Let us know in the comments section below.
U.S. Representative Patrick McHenry is pro-bitcoin. He is now hosting the Bitcoin whitepaper on his official congressional website and has called on other lawmakers to embrace innovation like Bitcoin. He believes that the cryptocurrency is unstoppable and governments cannot kill it.
Pro-Bitcoin US Lawmakers
A growing number of U.S. lawmakers have recently spoken in support of Bitcoin. Among them is Congressman Patrick McHenry from the state of North Carolina. On Friday, he talked on CNBC’s Squawk Box about how to approach regulation after last week’s market swings. “You can’t put technology back in the box. Innovation is here. We have to embrace. We have to broaden access to our markets, we have to broaden access to our financial products,” he said.
McHenry has long been a Bitcoin advocate. Last week, when the lawyer of the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto, Craig Wright, threatened to sue a few website owners for hosting the open-source Bitcoin whitepaper on their websites, McHenry uploaded the document onto his official congressional website. He then tweeted:
Policymakers should be on the side of innovation and ingenuity, which are vital to American competitiveness. I hope others in US govt join me. #Bitcoin
Another pro-Bitcoin U.S. politician is Miami Mayor Francis Suarez. He uploaded the Bitcoin whitepaper onto the Miami city website following the Craig Wright lawsuit threat. “The city of Miami believes in Bitcoin and I’m working day and night to turn Miami into a hub for crypto innovation. Proud to say Miami is the first municipal government to host Satoshi’s White Paper on government site,” Suarez wrote Wednesday.
Praising Suarez’s efforts in promoting Bitcoin and innovation, McHenry replied: “Impressed by what you are doing in Miami, Mayor Francis Suarez. I hope more policymakers will join us to support American innovation.”
Earlier this month, Suarez discussed putting some of Miami city’s treasury reserves in BTC and said he is working to allow payments of city services in the cryptocurrency.
McHenry has said that bitcoin is unstoppable and governments should not attempt to ban it. “The world that Satoshi Nakamoto, author of the Bitcoin whitepaper, envisioned and others are building is an unstoppable force,” he said during a hearing of the Committee on Financial Services in July 2019. “We should not attempt to deter this innovation, and governments cannot stop this innovation and those that have tried have already failed.” McHenry additionally emphasized: “Due to the nature of the technology of Bitcoin, governments cannot kill it, nor should they.”
Last week, McHenry commented on Joe Biden’s pick for the new chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler. He believes that the MIT blockchain professor’s receptiveness to new financial technologies and cryptocurrency is positive.
The U.S. Senate also has a vocal bitcoin advocate. Sen. Cynthia Lummis from Wyoming has vowed to help her colleagues in Congress understand that bitcoin is a great store of value.
What do you think of pro-bitcoin U.S. politicians? Let us know in the comments section below.
The heavy hitters in traditional finance have been concerned about the recent stock market action fueled by Redditors and a colossal number of retail investors. This week a Goldman Sachs executive warned that if these short squeezes continue it could “snowball through the market.” Moreover, Interactive Brokers founder Thomas Peterffy made similar comments this week saying these types of systemic risk can “take down the entire system, theoretically.”
Wallstreetbets Trend Could ‘Snowball Through the Market’
2021 has been an interesting year so far and this week a Reddit forum called r/wallstreetbets sparked a whole new hot topic. Four days ago, news.Bitcoin.com reported on the stock market fiasco that started with short squeezing Gamestop (GME) shares. But GME shares were not the only stocks that felt the push as the wallstreetbets (WSB) trend started leaking into a number of other types of shares.
For instance, stocks from the Russell 3000 Index (RUA) were targeted including tickers like NOK, GOGO, AMCX, and FIZZ. The social media craze even leaked into the cryptocurrency world pushing up coins like dogecoin and XRP as well. Estimates assume that short-sellers have lost “$70.87 billion from their short positions,” according to statistics from the financial data analytics firm Ortex.
An analysis from Zerohedge discloses that Melvin Capital lost a whopping $7 billion during the month of 2021. “Melvin Capital lost 53% in January, as Gabe Plotkin (a former SAC Portfolio Manager), lost over $5.3 billion in one month,” the report noted.
The financial newsdesk has also been reporting on another WSB trend taking place during the last week as short squeezers want to squeeze the silver market. One thread on r/wallstreetbets suggested that the power of the masses could squeeze the price of silver from $25 to $1,000. Zerohedge has been reporting on trends that show Redditors and social media users have managed to invoke demand for silver.
“In the 24 hours proceeding Friday market close, SD Bullion sold nearly 10x the number of silver ounces that we normally would sell in an entire weekend leading to Sunday market open,” the finance reporter disclosed. “In a normal market, we normally can find at least one supplier/source willing to sell some ounces over the weekend if we exceed our long position (the number of ounces we predict we will sell over the weekend).”
Additionally, polygon.com contributor Owen S. Good reported this week on how the meme-driven stock’ rally rescued AMC theaters from $600 million in debt. Meme lords and Redditors saved this business, not the U.S. federal government, not the bankers. Those groups were actively shorting AMC down the toilet. “Theater chain gets unexpected lifeline when private equity trades a corporate IOU for stock,” the author’s report explains.
r/wallstreetbets is now the largest hedge fund in the world.
Excepts it’s completely decentralized and entirely democratic.
Furthermore, the infamous Tyler Durden from Zerohedge wrote about an investors report published by Goldman Sachs executive David Kostin. Durden writes that the latest Goldman report warns “if the short squeeze continues, the entire market could crash.”
“The most heavily-shorted stocks have risen by 98% in the past three months, outstripping major short squeezes in 2000 and 2009,” Kostin’s study details. “This week demonstrated that unsustainable excess in one small part of the market has the potential to tip a row of dominoes and create broader turmoil,” the Goldman analyst added.
According to Durden from Zerohedge, Goldman’s Hedge Fund VIP list declined by 4% this week during the WSB fiasco. “In recent years elevated crowding, low turnover, and high concentration have been consistent patterns, boosting the risk that one fund’s unwind could snowball through the market,” Goldman’s David Kostin concluded. Durden interpreted Kostin’s final conclusion in a different way.
The author writes:
Translation: if WSB continues to push the most shorted stocks higher, the entire market could crash.
Interactive Brokers Chairman: ‘It Can Take Down the Entire System, Theoretically’
Goldman Sachs executives are not the only financial heavyweights weighing in on the stock market craziness and the possible aftermath. The founder and chairman of Interactive Brokers Group Inc., Thomas Peterffy, discussed his thoughts about the stock market madness in an interview with Marketwatch financial author Mark DeCambre.
Thomas Peterffy, founder and chairman of Interactive Brokers Group Inc.
On Thursday, DeCambre said that Peterffy explained that the short squeeze action could go on for a very long time unless it was stopped. DeCambre also wrote that Peterffy was worried about systemic risk and “the potential” for this trend “to ripple throughout the market.”
“It can take down the entire system, theoretically,” Peterffy stressed in his interview with DeCambre. “There is no reason why a short squeeze cannot go on indefinitely,” the Interactive Brokers founder detailed.
i'll be on @business at 4:20 pm ET to talk memestocks, gamestonk, robinhood, bitcoin, dogecoin, papa musk, and where we go from here
Meanwhile, a number of cryptocurrency enthusiasts have been cheering the WSB trend on as the virality of WSB vs Wall Street has encapsulated nearly all the social media conversations in the U.S. Meltem Demirors, the CSO of Coinshares, Europe’s largest digital asset manager with $3 billion in assets under management (AUM), gave her interpretation of the recent stock market events rattling the status quo.
“At its core, the events of this week are about free speech, censorship, and power. We are witnessing the fastest roll-up of power in human history,” Demirors said.
“As our lives become increasingly dependent on digital mediums,” Demirors continued. “So does the ability of powerful entities like governments and corporations to censor our right to free speech, our right to gather, our right to protest, and more. There is an unprecedented amount of power up for grabs, and what we see is a battle for control. It already played out on the political stage, and is now playing out in financial markets, financial media, Fintech platforms, and social media,” the Coinshares CSO added.
Furthermore, on January 29, the cryptocurrency trading platform Bittrex Global revealed that it was listing tokenized stocks for a number of the shares the WSB trend has been affecting. The exchange detailed that it made the decision because Bittrex wanted to “ensure retail investors have exposure to stocks they may wish to trade anytime during any day of the week.”
The crypto exchange also plans to list any other mainstream stocks that other finance trading platforms may censor in the future. The newly listed tokenized shares on Bittrex Global include Gamestop (GME), AMC Entertainment (AMC), Blackberry (BB), Nokia Corporation (NOK), and the Ishares Silver Trust (SLV). However, U.S. residents cannot participate, as Bittrex Global geo-blocks American citizens visiting the web portal.
“Bittrex is regulated in Lichtenstein and Bermuda and thus U.S. investors may be blocked from trading in these securities but other jurisdictions may be able to trade in these securities if they are interested,” the company details.
What do you think about the recent wallstreetbets (WSB) trend and Goldman and Interactive Brokers executives warning of systemic risk to the traditional finance system? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
Ripple Labs has officially responded to the complaint by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Besides explaining that the XRP cryptocurrency is not a security, Ripple accuses the securities regulator of being out of step, picking winners and losers, as well as distorting facts regarding the cryptocurrency.
In the court document filed on Jan. 29, Ripple claims that XRP is not an “investment contract,” insisting that the crypto “is a virtual currency and thus, outside the SEC’s jurisdiction.” Furthermore, the company stated that it never held an initial coin offering (ICO), never offered future tokens to raise money, and has no relationship with the vast majority of XRP holders.
The SEC, however, is “out of step domestically and globally,” claims Ripple. The company noted that no other regulators in the world have considered XRP to be a security. Ripple alleges that “Basically, on its way out, the Trump administration sought to undo the determination that XRP was a virtual currency made during the Obama administration.”
Among the regulators that have concluded that XRP is not a security include the U.S. Department of Justice and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), Ripple noted in its response. The two U.S. authorities determined in 2015 and 2020 that XRP is a virtual currency. Furthermore, the company added that the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the regulators in Singapore and Japan have similarly concluded that XRP is a not a security.
Ripple also accuses the SEC of “picking winners and losers.” The company claims that “there is no principled distinction between XRP’s current function and that of BTC or ETH.” Yet, the SEC determines that the two cryptocurrencies are not securities. In addition, Ripple asserted that “XRP is a great deal more environmentally friendly than BTC and ETH, considering it avoids the mining process … That must matter from a policy perspective.”
Moreover, Ripple alleges that the SEC has “distorted the facts,” stating that “The complaint filed by the SEC is full of cherry-picked quotes taken out of context, and draws conclusions that are unsupported by both the facts and the law.”
The SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple Labs, CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and co-founder Christian Larsen in December alleging that they sold over 14.6 billion units of XRP, which it considers unregistered security, for at least $1.38 billion. After the SEC’s lawsuit, several major cryptocurrency exchanges delisted XRP, including Coinbase, Binance, Okcoin, and Blockchain.com.
Ripple says it wants to resolve the dispute with the SEC as fast as possible, noting that since the securities watchdog brought the lawsuit against the company and its executives, XRP lost almost half of its market value. This has caused retail XRP investors with no connection to Ripple to suffer billions of dollars in losses.
What do you think about Ripple’s response to the SEC’s allegations? Let us know in the comments section below.
Payments giant Visa Inc’s CEO Alfred Kelly has revealed his firm’s plans to enable cryptocurrencies trading on its network. Kelly, who is also chairman of the firm, explains that there is no reason not to add cryptos when these are increasingly becoming “a recognized means of exchange.”
Digital Gold Segment
In an earnings call with analysts, Kelly opines that due to Visa’s “global presence, its partnership approach as well as its trusted brand”, the fintech giant is “uniquely positioned to help make cryptocurrencies more safe.” The CEO adds that Visa also wants to make cryptos “more useful and applicable for payments.”
However, to achieve this, Kelly says his organization will divide the crypto market into two segments, namely cryptocurrencies and digital currencies. Describing the assets that will be included in the cryptocurrency segment, the CEO says these will be viewed “as digital gold.” According to Kelly, such currencies are “predominantly held as assets that are not used as a form of payment in a significant way at this point.” The Visa boss then discusses the firm’s plan for such currencies saying:
Our strategy here is to work with wallets and exchanges to enable users to purchase these currencies using their Visa credentials or to cash out onto a Visa credential to make a fiat purchase at any of the 70 million merchants where Visa’s accepted globally.
According to Kelly, this strategy will be similar to Visa’s approach to “connect closed-loop wallets such as Line Pay and Paytm.”
Digital Currency Segment
Concerning digital currencies that will feature in the second segment, the Visa CEO says these will be consist of “fiat-backed digital currencies including stablecoins and central bank digital currencies.” He adds that these emerging payments innovations can potentially be “used for global commerce much like any other fiat currency.”
Meanwhile, the Visa CEO reveals some of the 35 organizations that have already chosen to issue Visa cards. These include leading digital currency platforms and wallets providers like “crypto.com, Blockfi, Fold, and Bitpanda.” According to Kelly, these wallet relationships “represent the potential for more than 50 million Visa credentials.”
What do you think of Visa’s plan to introduce crypto trading on its platform? You can share views in the comments section below.
Just recently, the Bitcoin Cash community has been discussing the large number of transactions the network has been seeing on a daily basis during the last month. Statistics show that bitcoin cash daily transactions have been increasing every day since the last week of 2020. Bitcoin Cash miners have processed upwards of 300,000+ daily transactions on various days during the past week.
The crypto economy and myriad of blockchain networks have been getting a lot more attention during the last few months. Not only has a number of digital assets jumped tremendously in value, but many of these tokens are seeing increased usage as well.
More recently, Bitcoin Cash proponents have been noticing that the BCH chain is handling a whole lot more transactions than usual. Since the last week of December 2020, BCH transaction counts per day have steadily risen northbound and have come awfully close to matching the Bitcoin (BTC) network’s daily output.
At the time of writing, onchain data shows the BCH chain processed 282,010 transactions during the last 24 hours while BTC has processed 334,793 in that time. This shows that BTC is handling 3.87 transactions per second, while BCH does 3.26 at this transaction rate.
Additionally, statistics from messari.io show that bitcoin cash (BCH) is currently the fourth most active blockchain under dogecoin (DOGE). Most of the time during the last month, BCH was the third-most active blockchain.
In terms of settlement, during the last 24 hours data shows the Bitcoin Cash network settled $4.34 billion among 80,529 active addresses. On Friday, Bitcoin Cash supporters discussed the increasing transaction count on Reddit.
One thread noted that on January 29, 2021, BCH had 322.26k transactions compared to BTC’s 322.22k daily count. “Community growth and utility is on the rise, and that’s the most important thing,” the author of the Reddit post stressed. Another person dubbed the “Transaction Maximalist” wrote:
The same throughput but still $0.001 transaction fees. Cool.
Even with the increase in transaction throughput BCH transaction fees have not risen. BCH has a 32MB block size parameter and in September 2018, participants observed the chain processing upwards of 2 million+ transactions in a 24 hour period.
During this period of time in 2018, a time the community called the “stress tests,” BCH miners processed massively sized blocks all week long. Bitcoin cash miners still process very large blocks, while BTC miners still deal with the 1MB limit and segregated witness (segwit) improvements.
On Saturday, BCH supporters celebrated a large 4723.044kB (4.7MB) block at block height 672,532. The large block processed 14,910 transactions and with the 6.25 BCH block rewards only $25 in fees were paid for the transaction confirmation. Software developer Jonathan Toomim talked about the larger sized block on Saturday morning as well.
“This block (672532) was mined at 8:30am UTC,” Toomim said. The previous block (672531) included only [one] transaction (Hathormm, aaarg!). The block before (672530) was mined at 7:12am UTC. So this 4.7 MB block comprised 1h28m worth of transactions. That’s about 0.53 MB per 10 minutes,” he added.
What do you think about the increased transaction count on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
The founder and chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund firm, has clarified his view on bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Ray Dalio also reveals that he and his colleagues at Bridgewater “are intently focusing on alternative storehold of wealth assets.”
Bridgewater Founder Ray Dalio ‘Greatly’ Admires Bitcoin
Ray Dalio, founder and chief investment officer of Bridgewater, has clarified his view on bitcoin and revealed what his company has in store for cryptocurrency. With about $140 billion in assets under management, his hedge fund is the largest in the world. AICIO Magazine and Wired Magazine have called Dalio the “Steve Jobs of Investing,” and TIME Magazine has named him one of the 100 Most Influential People.
In a research note published on the Bridgewater Associates’ website on Thursday, Dalio wrote: “I am writing this to clarify what I think of bitcoin. Please pay attention to what I am saying here and not what those in the media are saying I said because this is reliable.”
He began by admitting that he is not an expert on bitcoin or cryptocurrency. “Still, people demand my non-expert assessment of bitcoin and clarifications in my own words are better than distortions in the media so here it goes, presented with the warning not to rely on it,” Dalio declared, elaborating:
I believe bitcoin is one hell of an invention. To have invented a new type of money via a system that is programmed into a computer and that has worked for around 10 years and is rapidly gaining popularity as both a type of money and a storehold of wealth is an amazing accomplishment.
Emphasizing the current need for “alternative gold-like assets,” Dalio asserted that “Because there aren’t many of these gold-like storehold of wealth assets that can be held in privacy and because the sizes of their markets are relatively small, there exists the possibility that bitcoin and its competitors can fill that growing need.”
The Bridgewater founder noted: “It seems to me that bitcoin has succeeded in crossing the line from being a highly speculative idea that could well not be around in short order to probably being around and probably having some value in the future.”
He further said: “I greatly admire how bitcoin has stood the test of 10 years of time, not only in this regard but also in how its technology has been working so well and has not been hacked.” Nonetheless, the Bridgewater executive cautioned that those “holding digital/cyber assets at a time when cyber offense is much more powerful than cyber defense, the cyber risk is a risk that I can’t ignore.”
In conclusion, Dalio said bitcoin looks to him “like a long-duration option on a highly unknown future that I could put an amount of money in that I wouldn’t mind losing about 80% of.” He concluded, “That is what bitcoin looks like to this non-expert. I am eager to be corrected and learn more,” elaborating:
Believe me when I tell you that I and my colleagues at Bridgewater are intently focusing on alternative storehold of wealth assets.
Dalio further revealed: “Expect Bridgewater to soon offer an alt-cash fund and a storehold of wealth fund in order to better deal with the devaluation of money and credit that we consider to be a major risk and opportunity, and bitcoin won’t escape our scrutiny.” The head of Bridgewater clarified that when he uses the word “bitcoin,” he means “bitcoin and its analogous competitors.”
Dalio has recently been talking more about bitcoin. In November, he admitted that he may be wrong about the cryptocurrency but still had doubts. In December, he said bitcoin could be an alternative storehold of wealth to gold.
What do you think about Ray Dalio’s view on bitcoin? Let us know in the comments section below.
Fidelity Digital Assets President Tom Jessop has shared his view on the future of bitcoin and cryptocurrency regulation under the Biden administration. He confirms that Fidelity is seeing strong demand for bitcoin from institutional buyers.
Fidelity Digital Assets’ Head Optimistic About the Future of Bitcoin
Jessop explained what he expects in terms of cryptocurrency regulation from the Biden administration in an interview with CNBC last week. Jessop is head of Corporate Business Development for Fidelity Investments and president of Fidelity Digital Assets.
He began by talking about Joe Biden’s pick as the new chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler. Given the MIT blockchain professor’s experience in the space, Jessop said, “I think it paints a more generally constructive attitude, or a picture, in terms of what we might expect going forward.”
The Fidelity Digital Assets head also believes that positive crypto regulations implemented during the Trump administration will continue. “I would note that we saw some fairly interesting and good regulatory developments last year,” he opined. “You look at the OCC and some of the guidance they’ve given banks around access to the asset class or even participating in some of these networks.” The Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), under Brian Brooks, introduced a number of positive regulations for cryptocurrency. However, Brooks recently resigned.
Jessop said that during the previous administration:
We’ve started to see more constructive engagement with the regulators … We think that will persist into the new year just given what we’re seeing in terms of institutional as well as retail demand.
Commenting on Janet Yellen’s recent remarks that cryptocurrencies are mainly used for illicit financing, Jessop admitted that it does worry him. However, he contradicted the new Treasury Secretary by quoting a recent report by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis which found that crypto crime fell sharply to only 0.34% of all crypto transactions in 2020.
Without dismissing Yellen’s concern, Jessop said, “but I think that there are perhaps other places to look … where this activity [illicit financing] is occurring with greater frequency and in greater size. So, I would not diminish the risk but I think the risk is potentially smaller than people might suggest it to be.” Furthermore, he believes that “it’s diminishing or declining on a year-on-year basis, which again is positive in terms of further development of this ecosystem.”
As for the bitcoin market which has seen significant price movements over the past weeks, the Fidelity Digital Assets president shared:
Our clients, institutions that work with us, have been steady net buyers throughout the entire period and we continue to see strong demand among institutions for access to the asset class. That’s really our perspective on what’s happened recently.
“I think we are in a very different market now than the one we experienced in 2017,” the Fidelity executive said without ruling out the possibility of any future bitcoin price decline. “I think the composition of investor interest has changed dramatically,” he described, emphasizing that we have moved from 2017 which saw “a very retail-driven frenzy” and “now we’re seeing a much broader base of institutional adoption.”
Jessop proceeded by rapidly listing more evidence: “You’re seeing this certainly from service providers like us in our business. You’re seeing this through open interest on futures exchanges. You’re seeing this with Blackrock announcing that a few of their funds will have access to bitcoin futures.” He concluded:
I also think the market is maturing. There’s more liquidity. Volatility is down about 50% from where it was in 2017. So I do believe, we believe, that the composition of this investor base, what’s driving the market higher today, is fundamentally different than what we saw three years ago.
Do you agree with Fidelity’s Jessop about the future of bitcoin? Let us know in the comments section below.
The Pirate Bay has been the world’s most popular torrent web portal for the last eighteen years. Despite a few hiccups during that time, the site remains accessible via mirrors and proxy websites. In addition to remaining online, Pirate Bay has been accepting bitcoin for donations since 2013 acquiring more than $4.5 million worth since then.
The Pirate Bay’s Bitcoin Stash
Since 2003, when it was founded by the Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, the Pirate Bay has been the most popular, and perhaps the most beloved torrent website in the world. The web portal is basically an index of digital content hosted online so users can download, own, and seed the content via Bittorrent technology.
Of course, in 2009, the Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, and Fredrik Neij got into some trouble over copyright laws. While the founders dealt with prison sentences during that time, the Pirate Bay continued to operate and in 2013, the web portalannouncedit was accepting bitcoin donations.
In fact, the founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterinwrote about itduring the week the Pirate Bay announced bitcoin support. Buterin discussed the acceptance when he was contributing articles to Bitcoin Magazine in April 2013. The ETH cofounder noted at the time that the Pirate Bay raised over 10 BTC, worth $1,300 that month in 2013, during the first day of donations.
“Other major torrent sites have quickly started to do the same thing,” Buterin said. “EZTV, Openbittorrent, Publicbittorrent, and istole.it have all added bitcoin donation addresses onto their front pages,” he added.
Are Pirate Bay Founders Bitcoin Rich?
Of course, since then the Pirate Bay has changed its bitcoin (BTC) donation address since then and at the end of 2019,speculation was aboundconcerning how much the site has accumulated over time.
Pirate Bay cofounder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg.
The first BTC address the Pirate Bay used was mentioned by Buterin in his article and thatempty addressonce held 22.57 BTC. In another publicly knowndonation addressthe Pirate Bay leveraged, the operation accumulated 13.37 BTC. But the Pirate Bay also had anotherBTC addresswhich gathered 76.80 BTC in donations. In the Torrentfreak speculation article, the report adds up the daily income it made between accepting LTC and BTC.
Torrentfreak’s Ernesto Van der Sar added up all the funds received since 2013 and up until 2016, hereportedthat the Pirate Bay made a donation average of $9.34 per day. Fast forward to 2019 and the researchers disclosed that it had risen to$13.16 per dayin BTC and $0.40 per day in litecoin (LTC).
All of the aforementioned BTC addresses have been emptied and onchain analysis shows the coins were consolidated and then mixed using a form of the Coinjoin protocol. The Pirate Bay still gets donations today but they have tapered off a great deal since 2015.
What do you think about the Pirate Bay’s accumulated hoard of bitcoins since 2013? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
A cryptocurrency fund manager has been charged in a U.S. federal court. He allegedly took over $5 million from investors interested in investing in his crypto funds, promising them high returns. In reality, he was running a Ponzi scheme and is now facing up to 30 years in prison.
Crypto Fund Manager Arrested for Running a Ponzi Scheme
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Tuesday that Jeremy Spence has been arrested and charged in Manhattan federal court in a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme. The 24-year-old from Bristol, Rhode Island, is also known as “Coin Signals.”
Spence is “a cryptocurrency trader who solicited funds for various cryptocurrency funds that he operated, with commodities fraud and wire fraud offenses,” the DOJ described, adding:
Spence took cryptocurrency worth over $5 million from more than 170 individual investors after making false representations in connection with these cryptocurrency funds.
U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss explained that the defendant “allegedly lured investors to his cryptocurrency investment scam by touting returns of up to 148%.” However, his investment pools consistently lost money.
FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Sweeney further detailed that Spence allegedly “used money from new investors to pay off others in order to keep his plan moving — a typical marker of a Ponzi scheme.”
According to the Justice Department, from November 2017 through April 2019, Spence solicited investors for several cryptocurrency investment funds that he had created and managed. Investors “would transfer cryptocurrency, such as bitcoin and ethereum,” to him to invest in the funds for them. The DOJ elaborated:
The largest and most active of which were the Coin Signals Bitmex Fund, a/k/a the ‘CS Mex Fund,’ the Coin Signals Alternative Fund, a/k/a the ‘CS Alt Fund,’ and the Coin Signals Long Term Fund.
Spence is charged with one count of commodities fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, and one count of wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has also filed a federal civil enforcement action against Spence, charging him with fraud for operating the Ponzi scheme.
What do you think about this case? Let us know in the comments section below.
A U.S. federal judge has rejected a motion filed by a former Ethereum Foundation developer over allegations of assisting North Korea to bypass sanctions. Prosecutors claim, Virgil Griffith, aided the regime by providing critical information on cryptocurrencies.
Prosecutors Say Griffith’s Speech Was About the Use of Cryptos to Circumvent Sanctions
Per Law360, a jury is now set to determine if Griffith violated the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by giving a speech at the Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference in 2019.
Kevin Castel, a U.S. District Judge, denied Griffith’s motion because the “short and vague” four-page indictment lacked specific details of his alleged criminal actions. He further commented on the matter:
Examining the indictment in light of the parties’ arguments, the court concludes that it provides adequate notice of the charges against Griffith sufficient to enable him to prepare for trial and, if it becomes necessary, plead double jeopardy as a defense. Further, upon review of the law governing the offense conduct, the indictment states a federal crime and violates no constitutional prohibition.
Prosecutors accused the former Ethereum Foundation developer of giving a speech in Pyongyang about the use of cryptocurrencies to get around U.S. economic sanctions.
Griffith was arrested on Thanksgiving Day in 2019. However, on December 30, 2019, he was granted bail by U.S. District Judge Vernon Broderick.
Many crypto supporters stood up for Griffith’s cause when he was arrested, and influencers like John McAfee called the U.S. government “corrupt at the core.”
Griffith didn’t receive permission from the U.S. Department of Justice to travel to South Korea for the conference. However, per court documents, he got the approval of the North Korean United Nations (UN) Mission in Manhattan and was granted a visa.
Griffith Claims His Speech Was Based on Publicly-Available Information About Blockchain
The Ethereum proponent alleges he gave very basic information about blockchain to about 100 North Koreans who attended his speech. Also, he adds that everything said in his participation is publicly available on the internet. However, prosecutors believe North Korea could use his speech’s content to launder money and bypass sanctions potentially.
Also, the court revealed a message sent by Griffith to colleagues in 2018 before his speech, which reads as follow:
We’d love to make an Ethereum trip to the DPRK and set up an Ethereum node … It’ll help them circumvent the current sanctions on them.
But the former blockchain developer claimed in his rejected motion that such speech was protected by the First Amendment freedom of speech.
As of press time, the court date for Griffith’s case is still set for September 2021.
What do you think about this federal judge’s decision? Let us know in the comments section below.
The Indian government has finally moved forward with a cryptocurrency bill. Entitled “The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2021,” the bill has been listed for consideration in the current parliamentary session of Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament. It seeks to create a framework for India’s official digital currency to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) but prohibit all cryptocurrencies.
Indian Government Set to Introduce Cryptocurrency Bill in Current Parliamentary Session
After almost two years of waiting, the Indian government has finally moved forward with a cryptocurrency bill. According to Lok Sabha’s bulletin dated Jan. 29, the bill entitled “The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2021” is listed for consideration in the current parliamentary session. The budget session of Parliament commenced on Friday and will conclude on April 8, with a recess between Feb. 15 and March 8. The union budget will be presented on Feb. 1.
The bulletin lists the bills the Indian government has sent to be taken up during the budget session. Among them is the cryptocurrency bill, whose description reads:
To create a facilitative framework for [the] creation of the official digital currency to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India. The bill also seeks to prohibit all private cryptocurrencies in India, however, it allows for certain exceptions to promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its uses.
The section of Lok Sabha’s bulletin showing the cryptocurrency bill listed for “introduction, consideration, and passing” in the budget session. Source: Lok Sabha’s bulletin.
The Mint publication explained: “In the legislative order of business for the budget session of 17th Lok Sabha that commenced today, the government has listed a bill providing for the banning of all private cryptocurrencies in India such as bitcoin, ether, ripple, and others.”
This bill to ban cryptocurrencies resembles the crypto bill drafted by an interministerial committee (IMC) headed by former Finance Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg. That bill, dated February 2019, was unveiled by the finance ministry in July 2019. It proposes to ban all private cryptocurrencies and provides for the creation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital rupee. Garg has since resigned from his government work and the finance ministry had been silent on the bill until now.
On Monday, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) published a booklet on India’s payment systems acknowledging the popularity of cryptocurrencies. The central bank also confirmed that it is “exploring the possibility as to whether there is a need for a digital version of fiat currency and in case there is, then how to operationalise it.” In December, the finance ministry was reported to be considering imposing an 18% goods and services tax (GST) on bitcoin transactions.
First Introduction of Crypto Bill in Parliament, Crypto Community’s Reaction
Although there have been reports of the Indian government planning to prohibit cryptocurrencies before, this is the first time that a bill to ban crypto has been listed for consideration in Lok Sabha.
The Indian crypto community disapproves of the government’s decision. “That’s insane,” one Twitter user wrote. Another warned that the RBI better not ban bitcoin, stating that the “Crypto bill should not be a FUD at this point or India will miss out on the momentum and innovation in the decentralization space.”
The CEO of the Indian crypto exchange Wazirx, Nischal Shetty, commented: “A country as large as India should at least work on understanding the underlying terminologies before presenting technology-related bills in parliament. Seems like a hurried move. If done wrong, this can potentially destroy a lot of value held by the general public.” He added, “Let’s hope this is a precursor to positive crypto regulations,” emphasizing:
Just because a bill is presented doesn’t mean it’ll be cleared … Wrong or hasty regulations will set us back by a decade. Right regulations will catapult India to the forefront of this technology.
“We have leaders who are technologically capable and they’ll definitely raise issues around this,” the CEO believes.
Neeraj Khandelwal, co-founder and chief technology officer at Coindcx, another Indian cryptocurrency exchange, pointed out that it is estimated that there are more than five million Indians holding “a combined wealth of $10 billion in bitcoin which is 2% of India’s forex reserves, taxation on crypto can fetch a few billion dollars in taxes to the Indian govt.” He reiterated that “Previous attempts to ban bitcoin in India have been unsuccessful. The industry has survived 2 years during the RBI imposed banking ban.”
The Indian crypto ban news came after a price spike in bitcoin following Tesla CEO Elon Musk changing his Twitter profile to “#bitcoin” and tweeted, “In retrospect, it was inevitable.”
Do you think India will ban crypto? Let us know in the comments section below.
