Former presidential candidate and congressman Ron Paul has been more outspoken about government oversight concerning Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the last week, calling on people to “be vigilant.” In an episode of the Stephan Livera podcast released on Sunday, Paul said he was just as worried about authorities coming to “confiscate” his gold as he was about the confiscation of crypto assets. The libertarian noted that there had been instances of people “taking crypto that they shouldn’t,” but seemingly placed the blame for any potential fraud in the future on the government. “The more successful crypto is going to …
Institutional investors will play an important role in securing the future of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), according to Erik Voorhees, CEO and founder of ShapeShift. In a panel discussion at this year’s LaBitConf, Voorhees said Bitcoin’s adoption curve will grow substantially over the next five to 10 years. In that time, Voorhees estimated that half the world could have exposure to BTC. He believes that mass adoption will occur much later, however, once Bitcoin becomes the global monetary standard. The panel was virtually unanimous in the view that Bitcoin is better served with entities of different persuasions buying and holding …
Digital-asset regulation has been a hot topic in 2020 and shows no signs of cooling. A recent G7 meeting concluded that the sector faces an ongoing need for regulation. In addition to talking about COVID-19 and economic issues, the group “also discussed ongoing responses to the evolving landscape of crypto assets and other digital assets and national authorities’ work to prevent their use for malign purposes and illicit activities,” according to a public statement from the United States Department of the Treasury on Monday: “There is strong support across the G7 on the need to regulate digital currencies. Ministers and …
Japanese firm Layer X will be partnering with a digital identity application called xID to build a blockchain-based voting system in the Japanese city of Kaga. In a Thursday announcement from LayerX, the Tokyo-based company said it will be developing the electronic voting project in an effort to promote safe and secure elections for the city of 68,000 inhabitants. The firm stated that the cost and stability of current electronic voting systems in the region needed to be addressed. “Voting over the Internet presents more challenges, such as preventing double voting, technical hurdles to keep ballots secret, and the cost …
Facebook, it is reported, could launch its long-awaited digital currency as early as January 2021 in the form of a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin. Central banks and regulators have been galvanized into action since Facebook first announced its intentions by publishing a white paper in 2019. They are right to be concerned, as stablecoins — particularly ones such as the rebranded Diem that have the potential for massive network effects — bring new risks to consumers and savers as well as to the global financial system. Related: What Is Libra? Breaking Down Facebook’s New Digital Currency But they also have the …
Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law. Editor's note For several weeks, rumors have circulated in the United States that the Treasury Department under Steven Mnuchin is planning some sort of rulemaking to ban or severely restrict self-hosted cryptocurrency wallets. The Treasury hasn’t made any public statements to support these rumors, but they are persistent and pervasive enough to be worth paying attention to. In the broader cycle of financial news, Secretary Mnuchin is currently under a lot more scrutiny for his plans to return nearly half a …
Hester Peirce, commissioner for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, explained during an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph that decentralized finance, also known as DeFi, has created new challenges for the SEC. Peirce, nicknamed “Crypto Mom” for her interest in digital-asset innovation, mentioned that the quickly rising DeFi sector has resulted in a number of unresolved legal issues: "DeFi has posed a challenge for the SEC in a similar way that the ICO boom did in 2017. What is different here is that the pace of DeFi has actually been much faster. I also think that the legal issues are …
The United Nations has released a blockchain-powered solution to help the Afghan government manage property ownership issues in the country’s urban areas. According to a Dec. 2 announcement, the U.N. Human Settlements Programme, or U.N.-Habitat, will present its new digital land registry solution to the Ministry of Urban Development and Land in Afghanistan in December 2020. The U.N. first launched its blockchain project for sustainable urban development in Afghanistan in 2019. Now, with its new blockchain-enabled digital land registry tool, the U.N. wants to help Afghanistan address major challenges in urban informal settlements — otherwise known as slums or shanty …
The Bank for International Settlements and the Swiss National Bank and are exploring the benefits of implementing a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, using blockchain technology. According to a Dec. 3 announcement, the BIS Innovation Hub Swiss Centre, or BISIH, has successfully completed two proofs-of-concept linking existing payment systems to a distributed ledger and settling tokenized assets with a wholesale CBDC. Known as “Project Helvetia,” the new initiative is a joint venture from the BISIH, the SNB and Switzerland’s top stock exchange, Six Group. The exchange stated that Project Helvetia explored the technological and legal feasibility of transferring digital …
There are technical limits to even the most technologically ambitious of central banks. So says Sky Guo, CEO of Cypherium — an enterprise blockchain platform that has partnered with a number of Chinese cities and has worked with projected central bank digital currencies. “CBDC is definitely really hot with central banks these days,” said Guo. CBDCs are all the rage this year, largely due to a surge in fiat-pegged stablecoin value and a sudden interest in upgrading non-cash systems amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But while the talk surrounding CBDCs involves language taken from the world of blockchain-backed digital currencies, even …
The U.S. Treasury's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is expanding an outreach program designed to provide access to minority depository institutions, or MDIs. Per a Thursday announcement shared with Cointelegraph, the OCC's Project REACh is expanding to include a pledge of large and mid-sized banks partnering with MDIs. The pledge requires the partner bank to expand investment and support for executive development at the MDI that it works with. MDIs are simply banks or credit unions that are majority-owned by ethnic or racial minorities. They are seen as critical to expanding financial inclusion to minority groups left out …
As Cointelegraph reported two weeks ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission put out a rare no-action letter in defense of IMVU’s new blockchain-based VCOIN. VCOIN is only the third digital token to get such legal protection from the U.S. securities regulator, which makes it an exciting development. The SEC has been extremely active in punishing initial coin offerings that it views as unregistered securities offerings, but it has been more reluctant to define what does not count as a security — a problem that Commissioner Hester Peirce noted just last night. A no-action letter is, however, not the same as …