In the absence of regulatory standards and legal guidelines, cryptocurrency exchanges increasingly face scrutiny from regulatory bodies around the world. While the biggest exchanges have the financial capacity to shift their country of operation, the smaller ones shut shop abruptly, or begin their process of wrapping up their business in a legal manner.
Another Eight Bite The Dust
According to , eight cryptocurrency exchanges in have requested a withdrawal of their cryptocurrency operations. However, due to Japan’s Revised Fund Settlement law, the exchanges in question are legally allowed to continue operations, regardless of the application’s review status.
In the last week of April 2018, Japan’s Financial Service Agency (), put together a ‘study-group’ to ideate standards and set guidelines for the functioning of cryptocurrency exchanges in the country.
The study group includes the who’s who of the Japanese regulatory department, including representatives from the bank of Japan, the Consumers Affairs Agency, Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Finance came together, along with Taizen Okuyama of Money Partners.
The withdrawal request for operating licenses can be attributed to the firms possibly fearing in anticipation of what the guidelines might entail.
According to the FSA:
“Eight deemed virtual currency exchange companies announce the intention to withdrawregistration application. One company confirms that it does not fall under the virtual currency exchange industry as a result of grasping the actual situation in detail.”
However, the FSA confirmed that more than a 100 companies are willing to enter the cryptocurrency exchange market, by relevant laws and regulations.
Inevitable Regulations to Soon be Introduced
The agency is also making sure that all the norms set by them are met and hence, have started handing out administrative penalties. Around fourteen orders have been issued till now, in which, five crypto exchanges were subjected to business suspension while seven received business improvement orders. Companies like and received two orders.
, the operator of Abema TV and various online advertising businesses, is one of the hundred companies that are willing to enter the crypto space, in the form of a subsidiary called Cyberagent bitcoin.
Owning to the Coincheck hack, CEO says there are high risks involved which the company does not want to undertake, thus delaying its entry in the market. He adds:
“Entry [into the crypto space] is slow in the first place. The examination by the Financial Services Agency is becoming severe.”
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American comedy series which traces the journey of the life of six programmers in the San Francisco region has just inspired a new cryptocurrency price notification website. A technology company Viska has brought the alarm featured on an episode of the show to life.
Silicon Valley’s Version
In episode three of season five, one of the show’s lead characters Gilfoyle mentioned his hobbyist operation. To remain profitable, however, he decided to mine only when the price of a bitcoin rose above a certain threshold.
(Source: )
The show then went on to show that Gilfoyle had programmed a tool to play the death metal song “” by Napalm Death every time the price of bitcoin fell below a specific value, indicating that it was no longer profitable to mine it.
The episode depicted the alarm being triggered to play “You Suffer” every time the price of went above or below a certain level. Gilfoyle’s mining setup was installed at his residence, which he monitored and controlled from his workplace.
Given that bitcoin uses proof of work (PoW) algorithm for transaction verification on the , it is a very power intensive process. Thus, it becomes economically unviable to mine when it dips below a particular value.
The system Gilfoyle when the threshold was breached, suggesting that he could then switch on or off the mining machines. This way, the show also took a light-hearted dig at the wild price fluctuations currently faced by the cryptocurrency market, especially since the alarm was shown to go off repeatedly within short spans of time.
From Reel to Real
Iceland based tech company Viska has developed a web version of the same alarm, even going as far as playing the 1.36 second-long clip of the song “You Suffer.”
Sindri Gudmundsson of Viska that it has almost become a ritual for his entire office to watch Silicon Valley whenever a new season airs. He added that the team wrote a simple JavaScript plugin that fetched the price of bitcoin from . It took another three hours for the entire website to go live.
Shortly after, the company formally announced , an online tool where users can be alerted every time the price crosses a certain threshold. While the price set by Gilfoyle on the show was not revealed, the website allows the user to set a custom value of their choice.
(Source: )
Cryptocurrency Price Notifications
bitcoin saw a dramatic prove rise in 2017 and is now trading at moderate levels between $8,000 and $10,000.
Most cryptocurrency investors use applications provided by their cryptocurrency exchange, including those offered by and . These applications are quite basic and often lack the functionality to be repeatedly alerted for specific time intervals.
Nevertheless, it seems as if cryptocurrency is the theme for Season five of Silicon Valley as episode seven is focussed on Initial Coin Offerings (). Details about the episode will only be known once it airs on Sunday, May 6, 2018, though.
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