SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce believes that the U.S. government cannot ban bitcoin, stating that “it’s very difficult to ban something that’s essentially a peer-to-peer technology.” The commissioner is hopeful that with the new chairman who has deep knowledge of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, the SEC can take a fresh look at some of the reasons used to reject bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). SEC Commissioner Says ‘Very Difficult’ to Ban P2P Technology Hester Peirce, a commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) who is also known in the crypto community as “crypto mom,” was asked whether there is a possibility that the Biden administration could ban bitcoin in an interview with Fox Business’ Charles Gasparino on Thursday. With new cryptocurrency regulations in the works, investors are concerned whether the government will ban cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin. Some people have warned that governments can outlaw bitcoin if it becomes a risk to their financial systems. Among them are Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio, The Big Short’s Michael Burry, and Ron Paul. A bitcoin proponent, Peirce has been advocating for the SEC to approve bitcoin ETFs. Regarding the possibility of banning bitcoin in the U.S., the commissioner opined: I think it’s very difficult to ban something that’s essentially a peer-to-peer technology. I think the goal, as with any technology, is to prevent people from using it for illicit purposes and only allow them to use it for legal purposes. That’s what I expect to happen. Commissioner Peirce previously said that the government would be “foolish” to try to ban bitcoin, likening it to shutting down the internet. The U.S. government is concerned about cryptocurrencies being used in illicit activities. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said several times that cryptocurrencies are mainly used for illicit financing. She also said previously that the Treasury will work with other regulators to come up with appropriate regulations for the crypto space. Fox Business recently reported that crypto regulation may start from the Treasury and the SEC is waiting for direction on broad regulatory policies on cryptocurrencies from the Treasury. The SEC also has a new chairman; Gary Gensler was confirmed to lead the commission last week. He has deep knowledge of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, having taught classes on the subject at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Gensler is also a former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). He is expected to impose a fair amount of regulation on cryptocurrencies. Last week the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill mandating that the SEC and the CFTC establish a working group focused on digital assets. Regarding the possibility of the SEC approving a bitcoin ETF this year, Peirce said, “With the new chairman, we will be able to take a fresh look at some of the reasoning that we used to deny bitcoin exchange-traded products in the past.” She added: “Frankly, Canada is ahead of us now. Not only they have bitcoin exchange-traded products, but they also have exchange-traded products based on ether.”
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On May 3, tokens stemming from the Chia network, a smart transaction blockchain created by the Bittorrent creator Bram Cohen, will start trading and transactions will be fully enabled. Rather than leveraging the proof-of-work consensus algorithm, Chia will utilize a model called proof-of-space which relies on storage. With Chia’s transactional launch pending, the project has sparked shortages over the demand for hard drives and solid-state drives (SSDs). Chia Network Fuels High-End Hard Drive and SSD Shortages Bram Cohen, the inventor of the popular torrenting application Bittorent has created a cryptocurrency that’s set to launch next month. Because Cohen is behind the Chia project, the pre-stages of the digital currency network have seen significant exposure since Chia was announced. Chia’s team believes that the project can allow anyone the ability to verify transactions without being dependent on “single-use hardware or a big electricity bill.” Chia released the project’s Business White paper in February 2021 and the mainnet launched on March 19. This allowed participants to begin accessing farming rewards, but it also spurred the start of demand for hard drives and SSDs. Transactions will be enabled on May 3 and at that point in time, exchanges and brokerage services can allow people to trade chia tokens. The closer the Chia network’s transactional launch gets, the more demand grows for storage components. The South China Morning Post (SCMP) explains that there’s been a major shortage in China when it comes to SSDs and hard drives. Chinese hard drive and SSD manufacturers are selling out quickly and product prices have skyrocketed on secondary markets. Bittorrent Creator Bram Cohen's Crypto Project Chia Sparks Hard Drive and SSD Shortages Chia documentation says “a Proof-of-Space protocol is one in which: a Verifier can send a challenge to a Prover, and the Prover can demonstrate to the verifier that the Prover is reserving a specific amount of storage space at that precise time. The proof of space protocol has three components: plotting, proving/farming, and verifying.” Chinese e-commerce markets like JD.com and Taobao have seen high-grade hard drive models sell out fast since the Chia mainnet launch. A customer service agent for Taobao has seen the demand spike and underscored that the customers are chia miners. “Many people have inquired about large hard drives for chia mining in the past few days,” the Taobao agent noted. The agent also explained that brand-name equipment from Western Digital and Seagate has been experiencing shortages. Bittorrent Creator Bram Cohen's Crypto Project Chia Sparks Hard Drive and SSD Shortages A visual explanation of the Chia network’s Proof-of-Space protocol. On Chinese e-commerce platforms Taobao and JD.com, multiple models of enterprise-grade hard drives with large capacity have sold out. A hard drive and SSD seller in Shenzhen called Qin explained that on secondary markets, prices on this equipment can be up to 50% to 60% higher than retail. “You can mine chia with 4TB hard drives as well because we don’t have any hard drives over 4TB in stock,” Qin stressed. “At peak times, prices have been at least 60 percent higher than usual. Prices dropped a bit recently but they are still about 50 percent (higher than normal) now,” another vendor named Chen detailed. The Chia network’s storage incentives have increased storage product requests considerably and hard drives between 4TB and 18TB are seeing the highest demand. Cohen’s Success With Bittorrent Has Fueled Chia Hype Besides the hype stemming from the creator Bram Cohen and the speculation forming within the crypto community, venture capital seems interested in Cohen’s crypto as well. In 2018, Chia raised $3.4 million from Greylock, Andreessen Horowitz, and Angellist’s Naval Ravikant. Chia could also be an Ethereum competitor as it has its own onchain programming language called Chialisp. Cohen has explained that the smart transactions Chialisp will allow range from colored coin tech, atomic swaps, multi-sig wallets, recoverable wallets, authorized payees, and more. Cohen’s previous project which cemented his fame, Bittorrent, was sold to Justin Sun and is now owned and operated by the blockchain firm Tron. The file-sharing operation Bittorrent was reportedly sold to Tron for $126 million in 2018. A dogecoin investor has shared his story of how he became a crypto millionaire in a little over two months after learning about the meme cryptocurrency and pouring all his savings into it. He said he was inspired by Elon Musk’s tweets about dogecoin. A Doge Millionaire Shares His Story Glauber Contessoto, a 33-year-old who works at a music company in Los Angeles, has shared his story of how he became a dogecoin millionaire in just a little over two months. He invested over $180,000 in dogecoin on Feb. 5 when its price was about 4.5 cents, the investor told CNBC Make It in an interview published Friday. He learned about the meme cryptocurrency on Reddit and was inspired by Tesla’s technoking Elon Musk who tweeted about DOGE on several occasions. Contessoto explained that he was drawn to dogecoin for a few reasons. Besides loving the Reddit community surrounding dogecoin, he said he appreciates that the crypto was inspired by Shiba Inu “Doge” meme. He is also very bullish on the coin’s growth, believing that it could help him build “generational wealth” to pass on to his future family. “I grew up really poor, so this is a huge deal for me,” he opined. Furthermore, like many dogecoin holders, he said: A reason why I put my savings into dogecoin is Elon Musk … I think the guy is a genius. To invest in DOGE, Contessoto sold all of the stocks he owned, including shares of Tesla and Uber, and poured all his savings into the cryptocurrency. He then invested on margin by borrowing money from Robinhood via the app. The price of dogecoin has skyrocketed over the past months. Source: Markets.Bitcoin.com A number of experts have warned about investing in dogecoin. Bitcoin bull Mike Novogratz of Galaxy Digital, for example, told CNBC this week that dogecoin “literally has two guys that own 30% of the entire supply.” He added that bitcoin also has an extensive and well-funded ecosystem that does not exist with dogecoin, which does not have a supply cap like bitcoin does. It was a huge risk for Contessoto as he invested and held onto the cryptocurrency despite warnings from his friends, one of whom cautioned: “Dude, it’s a pump-and-dump [scheme]. It’s going to zero, eventually.” About two months later, on the night of April 15, the price of dogecoin began to surge. It then spiked 400% and hit a market capitalization of $49 billion on April 16. Dogecoin ultimately reached a record high of around 45 cents. Contessoto’s balance on April 16 on Robinhood was $1,081,441.29, which he posted on Reddit for others to see. Insisting that he doesn’t intend to sell his dogecoins anytime soon, he said: My plan is, once I hit $10 million, then I’ll take out 10%. This stuff is going to continue to grow. The price of dogecoin is currently $0.284006 based on data from markets.Bitcoin.com. Despite the recent drop in price, Contessoto said his DOGE balance is still over a million dollars. 2 turkish crypto exchanges investigated fraud central bank bans cryptocurrency use payments/5/7/2021 Two Turkish cryptocurrency exchanges are being investigated by the authorities in Turkey after they abruptly halted trading. The authorities have blocked access to the bank accounts of the second exchange and detained four people so far. Sixty-two people have been detained in connection with the first exchange whose CEO has fled the country. Second Turkish Crypto Exchange Being Investigated Following the alleged exit scam pulled by cryptocurrency exchange Thodex, another crypto trading platform is being investigated by Turkish authorities, the state-run Anadolu news agency said Friday. Vebitcoin, a Turkey-based crypto trading platform, became the second crypto exchange to face troubles within about a week after the country’s central bank banned crypto use for payments. Vebitcoin posted a notice on its website on Friday stating: “Due to the recent developments in the crypto money industry, there was a much higher density in our operations than expected. We would like to state with regret that this situation has led us to a very difficult process in the financial field.” The statement continues: We decided to cease our activities in order to fulfill all regulations and claims. Turkey’s Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK) has blocked the onshore bank accounts of Vebitcoin and begun an investigation into the platform. So far, four people have been detained as part of an investigation, a local prosecutor said on Saturday. Mehmet Nadir Yagci, a prosecutor in the southwestern city of Mugla, said in a statement: Four administrators and personnel of the company were detained on Saturday on allegations of fraud. This followed the authorities detaining 62 people in connection with crypto exchange Thodex whose CEO has fled the country after halting trading on his platform. Customers have filed complaints against the company as $2 billion of their funds are inaccessible. Both Thodex and Vebitcoin halted trading about a week after the Turkish central bank banned the use of cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, a means of payment in the country. “Crypto assets cannot be used directly or indirectly for payments … No service can be provided for direct or indirect use of crypto assets in payments,” the official notice by the central bank reads. nothing goes up in a straight line s2f creator plan b claims bitcoin price drop a mid way dip/5/7/2021 Bitcoin prices have dropped below the $50k region during this week’s trading sessions sinking to a low of $47,555 on Friday. The popular creator of the stock-to-flow (S2F) bitcoin price model, Plan B has discussed the recent price dip and stressed that “nothing goes up in a straight line.” Plan B believes this price drop might be a “mid-way dip,” similar to the crypto bull runs in prior years. ‘Looks Like the Mid-way Dip,’ Says Plan B During the first week of March, Bitcoin.com News reported https://secretstradingbitcoin.com/podcast/ on Plan B’s popular but also controversial stock-to-flow (S2F) price model. In that report, Plan B was very confident and BTC’s price surpassed the model by 26%. People believe that the S2F price model predicts bitcoin’s price reaching six-digit price ranges in the future. Since that report in March, however, BTC’s price has dropped -26.72% after the crypto asset’s all-time high of $64,895 per unit. 'Nothing Goes up in a Straight Line'- S2F Creator Plan B Claims Bitcoin Price Drop a 'Mid-way Dip' Plan B doesn’t seem phased by the drop and after prices fell, the S2F creator consoled his followers in a tweet. “Nothing goes up in a straight line. Bitcoin has gone up 6 months in a row, until this month. This looks like the mid-way dip that we also saw in 2013 and 2017,” Plan B emphasized. A number of people agreed with the S2F creator, as they believe the bitcoin stock dip is just temporary for now. “Right on schedule,” tweeted the Kraken representative Dan Held in reply to Plan B’s assessment tweet. In fact, Bitcoin’s S2F model has been a topical conversation again in recent times. “So let us take a look at Plan B’s S2F model,” one individual called Waro recently wrote. “You can see that bitcoin always has this mid-way bear period in its bull cycle and the correction we would see is at a minimum of 40%. This is quite in line with the untapped liquidity that the Elon pump has left behind,” he added. The financial reporter Wu Blockchain also spoke about the S2F model this week. Wu Blockchain remarked: According to Crypto Quant’s S2F Reversion data, with bitcoin’s sharp drop, the index plummeted to 1.827126. Compared to bitcoin’s decline, the index has fallen significantly more, [which may imply] a reliable buying opportunity. Plan B’s Recent Survey Shows 44% of Votes Think Bitcoin Will Reach $100K A bunch of crypto proponents think drops in bitcoin’s value should be expected during the bull runs and people still are confident six-digit BTC prices are coming. “10%-30% dips are to be expected in any bitcoin bull run [and] are exactly what happened in 2017 [and] 2012,” a Plan B fan said on Twitter. “Currently, BTC has dipped to the exact price level predicted by [Plan B’s] S2F model, so [it] is still nicely on track to hit $100k by Sept,” he added. Further, Plan B did a survey on Twitter and the poll saw 67,881 votes since April 24, 2021. The survey asked people their opinions about the S2F model what future BTC prices might come to fruition. “Do you think bitcoin will reach $500k, $288k (S2FX model), or $100k (S2F model) before December 2021… or will BTC stay below $100k?” Plan B asked his 405,000 Twitter followers. 44.6% voted for $100k, 25.5% voted for $288k, and 21.8% voted for the price staying below the $100k range. 8.6% of the 67,881 votes predicted prices could reach as high as $500k per bitcoin (BTC). |