Over the past year, as cryptocurrencies and ICOs started to go mainstream, we have seen a huge surge in regulatory activities. In the US, many different regulatory bodies including SEC, CFTC and FinCEN stepped forward to regulate crypto projects in different ways. Seemingly contradictory statements have added to confusion and fear of a broad crackdown looming.
We were joined by CoinCenter Director of Research Peter van Valkenburgh to shed clarity on recent developments and understand where things are heading.
Topics discussed in this episode:
The recent congressional hearings about cryptocurrencies and ICOsHow the US regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies evolved in the last yearWhether overly broad and contradictory regulation is emerging in the USUnderstanding the difference between CFTC and SECWhy CFTC regulating existing cryptocurrencies and SEC ICOs would be a good outcomeWhy decentralized exchanges will be a likely target by SECThe recent letter by FinCEN about ICOs and money transmissionComparing US to European regulation and why the US could end up more friendly
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A Time investigation into the development of Venezuela’s state-backed cryptocurrency, petro, revealed strong anecdotal and circumstantial evidence connecting Russia to its launch. At least two Russians with ties to Vladimir Putin were present at petro’s unveiling, complete with the Venezuelan president’s thanks. Analysts are claiming the South American country is Mr. Putin’s crypto guinea pig as the two nations try to find innovative ways around US sanctions.
Also read:
Report Claims Putin and Maduro Teamed to Launch Petro
Time online is referring to Tuesday’s official sale of as “a half-hidden joint venture between Venezuelan and Russian officials and businessmen, whose aim was to erode the power of U.S. sanctions,” finding “Moscow’s fingerprints all over the creation of the petro.”
Such revelations come at an interesting time for all three countries. In the US, the present administration has been accused of being too close to re-elected Russian President Putin. Mr. Putin is under international pressure for alleged acts of assassination on foreign shores along with meddling in elections abroad. Venezuela has long been a client state of Russia, and has equally been the object of scorn for several US administrations. The three were tied together, somewhat unknowingly (on the US side at least) by President Trump’s recent forbidding formal participation in the petro.
And truth be told it is Russia who would rather tread lightly at this point. Indeed, as Mr. Putin’s economic advisor, Igor Shuvalov, explained, “For Russia, it’s too dangerous. If we say that the only reason we do it is to avoid U.S. sanctions, then the United States is definitely going to be displeased about it. Venezuela has nothing to lose. For them it’s the only chance.” The Venezuelan economy is the daily subject of press accounts, documenting economic horrors.
So it might have seemed somewhat brazen to have no fewer than two Russian nationals connected front and center at petro’s media scrum launch last month. Denis Druzhkov and Fyodor Bogorodsky were thanked publicly by Mr. Maduro, and Mr. Bogorodsky stands at the one hour and eight minute mark to give a congratulatory speech in Russian (see video inset).
Covering Tracks on a Gamble
The two men were initially identified as representatives of a shadowy company, Aerotrading, which claims blockchain specialty. Within days of the presser, presumably to establish the company’s legitimacy, a sudden website and Twitter account were set up. Of the two men, Mr. Bogorodsky was the only to comment publicly.
Mr. Druzhkov is well connected to a Russian billionaire, while Mr. Bogorodsky is a former banking executive living in South America. The report describes him as having “close business ties with Russia and other former Soviet states.” It appears he’s been involved with petro since its inception late last year. Mr. Bogorodsky stresses, “Russia has been moving in this direction for a while now, trying to draft laws to regulate cryptocurrencies.” Venezuela’s pace has evidently been much quicker. Dismissing potential US concerns, he laughs, “Any citizen of the world can do what he wants. We offer freedom of choice. So I think there will be lots of investors, big and small, from all over the world.”
According to an anonymous “executive at a Russian state bank who deals with cryptocurrencies, senior advisers to the Kremlin have overseen the effort in Venezuela, and President Vladimir Putin signed off on it last year. ‘People close to Putin, they told him this is how to avoid the sanctions,’ says the executive. ‘This is how the whole thing started,’” the explained. Russia is insisting it had nothing to do with the petro’s creation.
State apparatchiks, on the other hand, have made plenty of statements about US financial sanctions. The head of Russia’s second largest bank, VTB, Andrei Kostin spoke openly recently about how “The reign of the dollar must end. This whip that the Americans use in the form of the dollar would then, to a great extent, not have such a serious impact on the global financial system.”
US regulators are quoted as not being too worried about petro nor the possibility of a . It is hard to say if state-backed cryptocurrencies could ultimately work. Such ideas have always suffered from violating key tenants of crypto: censorship resistance and decentralization. By definition, state-backed currencies violate both.
Do you think state-backed crypto can work? Let us know in the comments!
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RoadtoRoota Update: Mt. Gox Trustee Explains His Price Manipulation! (Bix Weir)
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Cryptocurrency exchange has introduced a decentralized advanced crypto coin platform bringing liquidity and prices from all major exchanges in one place. Coin holders can now trade cross-rates among coins directly. In effect, if any two coins are listed on STeX, investor can trade one against the other directly, which enables thousands of pair trades that weren’t available on the market before.
STeX team developed proprietary virtualization technology and named it A2A (Any2Any). A2A solves the cross-coin exchange problems common for the customers of other cryptocurrency exchanges. Typically, cryptocurrency exchanges offer a limited number of cross-coin rates or allow exchange of one coin to another via BTC or USD. STeX allows trading any supported coin to any other supported coin directly.
This pricing functionality is fully supported by other features, including all variety of trading abilities like trailing stop-loss orders, take-profit orders, charts, and much more. All the features one may find on STeX are available for cross-rates as well. If it were traditional commodity exchange, one could be able to directly trade sugar for coffee or oil for shares in Google without using USD or other currencies.
STeX also solves the liquidity problem, which is the case for many coins and tokens. In effect, the platform aggregates all supply and demand for coins and tokens on other exchanges enabling pool deals. This leads to enormous implications for active traders/investors. Most exchanges allow simplistic bid and ask price information with no market depth statistics, providing no understanding about volume available at a specific price, while this is valuable information fofr high net investors. Without this information, a reasonably large investor cannot make a truly informed decision and faces risks of selling significantly below expected price, or buying way higher.
This is exactly where STeX deploys proprietary algorithms and technical solutions. With STeX unique HFT algorithms, originally developed to work on traditional stock exchanges, the platform can solve this problem, providing access to all trading possibilities on one trading platform and via one trading account in a blink of an eye. STeX offers system contains several automated aggregation solutions and proprietary algorithms addressing the liquidity problem, including ability to create an own liquidity pool for a bigger deal.
On top of that, STeX is offering fast execution and direct access through fast API protocols to those who wants to become market-maker on STeX exchange, allowing them to trade without any commissions and with some other benefits. For all such trades the commissions are taken from a counterparty willing to buy or sell at the offered price.
The technology behind STeX has TOP-10 main advantages over regular cryptocurrency exchanges:
Vast variety investment opportunities with all trading pairs are on one platform. STeX is an aggregator which collects and aggregates offers from many other exchanges at one place. More than 10,000 trading pairs and more than 100 coins are presented at the platform. STeX provides a gate for various token exchanges without the need to use two or more exchange platforms;
Advanced security, as all STeX systems are encrypted and cannot be accessed without proper authorization from STeX administration. The project’s main assets, including user’s funds are stored in cold wallets and cannot be accessed from the internet;
Most attractive prices, when best bids and offers are aggregated from all exchanges and big orders are executed at more attractive prices;
Beauty of the single account. It is possible to take advantage from all exchanges using one account in the system. It is not necessary to switch accounts;
Savings because of no internal commission. STeX offers direct access through fast API protocols to those who wants to become a market maker at STeX which allows them to trade commission-free. For all such trades the commissions are taken from a counterparty willing to buy or sell at the offered price;
Ability reduce commissions up to 50 percent by paying with the exchange’s internal token;
Easy interface, clear and simple even for a newbie;
High speed provided via superfast cloud processing core – internal trades are completed in milliseconds;
No centralization, when STeX’s own cloud cluster is physically hosted in many countries to prevent the possibility of downtime due to real-world/technological attack or failure;
Potential for horizontal scaling. STeX A2A decentralized technology provides for supporting hundreds of thousands cross-rates simultaneously.
With total decentralization of the system architecture, unlimited scalability, hundreds of thousands of trade instruments, high-speed execution of orders and order system performing built-in trade algorithms, robots and managed accounts, futures and derivatives, as well as margin trading, the STeX project not only leads the crypto trading to the serious world level, it sets the new standard in the industry.
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![¿qué es bitcoin [btc]? Seguridad y usos de una tecnología disruptiva](https://ohiobitcoin.com/storage/2019/01/MDLWLV.jpg "¿qué es bitcoin [btc]? Seguridad y usos de una tecnología disruptiva")