South Korea’s Financial Services Commission has moved to ban cross trading on crypto exchanges in the country. The move is part of a raft of amendments to the country’s Act on the Reporting and Use of Certain Financial Transaction Information. Cross trading, an illegal practice in many jurisdictions, involves offsetting buy and sell orders for the same asset (at the same price) without recording the transaction on the order book. However, according to a report by local media outlet Newsis, exchange operators in South Korea have bemoaned the planned prohibition stating that the move would cause significant disruptions to their …

While it was billed as the “one of the biggest announcements in Bitcoin's history,” the market seems to be puzzling over the landmark reveal that El Salvador’s sitting President will be submitting legislation to recognize Bitcoin as legal tender. In a presentation at Bitcoin 2021 from Jack Mallers, CEO of Zap — developers of a previously low-profile Lightning Network wallet app named Strike — Mallers showed a short video from Salvadorian president Nayib Bukele where the leader of the 104th largest global economy announced the historic legislation. Strike currently has a 3.2 out of 5 star rating on the Google …

The era of unintelligible contracts written in legalese by lawyers in $2,000 suits with degrees from Ivy League schools is over. The contracts of the next century will be hybrid smart contracts, written in code by programmers wearing $20 hoodies and living in their NYC-shared apartment. What is a hybrid smart contract? Smart contracts are self-enforcing contracts, written in code and executed by the blockchain. These smart contracts are great at sending and receiving money, and doing simple calculations, but they cannot access off-chain data, perform complex calculations or generate random numbers on their own. Those limitations previously prohibited smart …

At the bustling Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Congressman Warren Davidson, alongside United States Senator Cynthia Lummis, sat down to field interview questions. The interview took a turn toward privacy, with Davidson responding with comments on crypto wallets. “At the end of the year, if you think about it, Secretary Mnuchin was talking about banning private wallets,” Davidson said, responding to a question about the possibility of over-regulation in crypto. “That’s a horrible approach,” he added. “If we don’t protect private wallets, someone is going to try to ban them.” As Davidson mentioned, December 2020 saw the U.S. Treasury suggest …

Small and medium-sized exchanges in South Korea had a chance to express some of their grievances with the government during a recent meeting with financial regulators. According to a report by South Korean news outlet D.Street, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) convened a closed-door meeting with 20 crypto exchanges on Thursday. Inside sources quoted by D.Street say the closed-door session was a parley between the FSC’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and the 20 crypto exchanges where the former expressed the government’s desire to implement its virtual asset service provider (VASP) report. Indeed, on May 28, the FSC issued a release …

Its infamous circular directing banks to cease servicing crypto firms may have been overturned in the courts but India's central bank is showing no signs of softening its stance towards cryptocurrencies. Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das reiterated the institution's position in a recent press conference following a statement on monetary policy, stressing: “We have major concerns around cryptocurrency, which we have conveyed to the government.” The governor's comments come after the Reserve Bank of India had been prompted to clarify that banks should not continue to cite the Reserve Bank of India's now-defunct circular as grounds for refusing …

Tinkoff, a major private bank in Russia, is struggling to offer cryptocurrency trading to its clients due to the central bank’s tough stance on digital assets. Tinkoff CEO Oliver Hughes said that the digital bank is willing to offer crypto trading services but is restrained by the Bank of Russia’s policies, CNBC reported. The executive announced the news at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum on Thursday, stating: “There’s no mechanism for us to offer that product to them in Russia at the moment because the central bank has got this very tough position.” Hughes said that the bank has …

Anatoly Aksakov, a member of Russia’s State Duma and a key spokesman for the country’s cryptocurrency legislation process, claimed that he has never owned any Bitcoin (BTC). Aksakov said that he doesn’t hold any Bitcoin and likely won't, as the government has prohibited officials from purchasing crypto, local news agency TASS reported on Thursday. The official went on to say that he was willing to buy some Bitcoin as an investment before the ban came into force last year. However, he thought that the price was too high at the time: “I wanted to buy only in order to accumulate. …

Cryptocurrencies’ persistent growth and ever more mainstream adoption are keeping international monetary authorities on their toes. In fresh comments this week, Stefan Ingves, the governor of Riksbank — Sweden’s central bank — said that digital assets’ rising popularity raises the stakes for regulators, central bankers and lawmakers worldwide: “When something gets big enough, things like consumer interests and money laundering come into play. So there’s good reason to believe that [regulation] will happen.” Devising regulatory frameworks for an asset that was initially designed to circumvent the very architecture and rules of traditional finance is no easy task. In the United …

As cryptocurrency markets grew in the first quarter of 2021, South Korean banks saw record volumes of deposits and withdrawals to local crypto exchanges. South Korean commercial banks processed 64.2 trillion won ($57.9 billion) of transactions on real-name bank accounts linked to crypto exchanges in Q1 2021, according to data from Financial Supervisory Service acquired by Democratic Party member Kim Byung-wook. The Q1 results comprise data from lenders like Shinhan Bank, online bank K Bank and Korean NH NongHyup Bank, as well as four major local crypto exchanges including Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone and Korbit, local business publication The Maeil Business …

India’s central bank has issued an official notice regarding the fact that local banks are reportedly cautioning customers against using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC). Published Monday, the notice points out that the Reserve Bank of India is aware of media reports that certain banks have cautioned their customers against crypto by referring to the RBI’s quashed, three-year-old circular. “Such references to the above circular by banks/ regulated entities are not in order as this circular was set aside by the Hon’ble Supreme Court on March 4, 2020 in the matter of Writ Petition,” the notice reads, emphasizing that the circular …

Singapore-based Bybit, the world’s fifth-largest cryptocurrency derivatives exchange by trading volume, has allegedly been running unregistered crypto services in Japan, according to an official warning. The Japan Financial Services Agency issued a formal warning letter to Bybit stating that the firm is not registered to operate crypto services in the country. The warning comes in response to Bybit’s marketing campaign that reportedly targeted Japanese investors, according to Norbert Gehrke, founder and representative director of tech hub Tokyo FinTech. “Such public reprimand for running an unregistered business has not occurred for a while, so one is to assume that the FSA …