Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs Main Directorate for Drugs Control (GUKON) is reported to be investigating whether criminal sanctions are appropriate for unregistered cryptocurrency operations. Local news outlet Izvestia has published what it claims are documents acquired from the ministry that detail its pursuit of an amendment to existing legislation that would criminalize crypto operations …
Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs Main Directorate for Drugs Control (GUKON) is reported to be investigating whether criminal sanctions are appropriate for unregistered cryptocurrency operations.
Local news outlet Izvestia has published what it claims are documents acquired from the ministry that detail its pursuit of an amendment to existing legislation that would criminalize crypto operations unregistering with financial and tax state authorities.
What would criminalization mean?
Head of GUKON Andrey Khrapov pushed the Ministry of Finance on its opinions on the feasibility and appropriateness of the proposed changes, with the Ministry of Economic Development apparently skeptical that criminalizing cryptocurrencies at this stage would be productive.
Savva Shipov, deputy chief of the Ministry of Economic Development, noted that Russian law currently lacks any clear regulations on cryptocurrency transactions, only pertaining to prosecution for people who utilize digital currencies for participating in illegal operations such as terrorist funding.
This position was supported by Artem Tolkachev, a legal expert and CEO at Sputnik DLT. Speaking to Cointelegraph, he said that it does not make sense to criminalize unregistered cryptocurrency operations prior to establishing clear-cut regulations in the country. Tolkachev described cryptocurrency trading as a ”grey zone” in Russia right now and, without a stable legal framework, there is not ground yet to criminalize it.
The proposed amendments would have a negative impact on the future of innovations from crypto-related businesses, according to Tolkachev. As he sees it, criminalization would just move operations out of Russia as he says several projects already have already begun working “through foreign setups”.
Crypto regulation in the works
In January, the Ministry of Finance introduced a bill that would fully regulate blockchain and cryptocurrency titled ‘On Digital Financial Assets‘. To date, it has passed the first of three required reading by Russia’s parliament. If successfully passed, it would legalize cryptocurrency activities including ICOs, but would not recognize digital currency as a legal form of payment in Russia.
CointelegraphNew Data From CFTC Shows Bearish Bitcoin Futures Are on the DeclineCointelegraphBearish positions for non-commercial contracts of Bitcoin (BTC) futures are on the decline, according to the latest Commitments of Traders (COT) report release…
Blackmail Scam Uses Passwords to Scare People into Paying Bitcoin. Don’t Fall for It. Fortune Several friends and professional contacts phoned me in a state of panic this summer saying they had received emails from a shady entity claiming to have hacked their computer webcams while they were viewing adult websites. The interlopers threatened to …
Blackmail Scam Uses Passwords to Scare People into Paying Bitcoin. Don't Fall for It. Fortune Several friends and professional contacts phoned me in a state of panic this summer saying they had received emails from a shady entity claiming to have hacked their computer webcams while they were viewing adult websites. The interlopers threatened to ...
CointelegraphCrypto Markets Keep Fluctuating: Most Top 20 Coins Back in Green, Bitcoin Above $6700CointelegraphAfter suffering a slump yesterday, crypto markets are back to green, with IOTA (MIOTA), Cardano (ADA), and EOS (EOS) seeing the biggest gains…
Crypto Markets Keep Fluctuating: Most Top 20 Coins Back in Green, Bitcoin Above $6700 Cointelegraph After suffering a slump yesterday, crypto markets are back to green, with IOTA (MIOTA), Cardano (ADA), and EOS (EOS) seeing the biggest gains among the top 10 coins, while Bitcoin (BTC) has broken back above the $6,700 point. Most of the top ten coins ...
Researcher Joshua Broggi envisions a new university powered entirely by blockchain technology, and is seeking accreditation in Malta to establish what will be a world’s first. Oxford Researcher Seeks Accreditation in Malta Broggi aims to build the world’s first ever “Blockchain University” and is hoping to set up shop ashore the European island nation of…
Researcher Joshua Broggi envisions a new university powered entirely by blockchain technology, and is seeking accreditation in Malta to establish what will be a world’s first.
Oxford Researcher Seeks Accreditation in Malta
Broggi aims to build the world’s first ever “Blockchain University” and is hoping to set up shop ashore the European island nation of Malta, according to Lovin’ Malta.
Woolf University will run entirely on blockchain technology in order to save on operating costs by automating administrative procedures. Meanwhile, blockchain’s cryptographic design and trustless immutable ledger technology will ensure degrees earned from the university are secure and can be validated using blockchain.
“We use a blockchain to create efficiencies by managing custodianship of student tuition, enforcing regulatory compliance for accreditation, and automation a number of processes,” Broggi told Forbes in an interview.
Woolf University will offer a variety of courses, both online and on-site. The structure is designed to encourage teaching anywhere in the world via personalized tutorials. Broggi says students and teachers alike will check-in, setting off a series of smart contracts that validate things like attendance and assignment completion, while also paying the teacher for their instruction and providing students with micro-credits to apply against their course.
The blockchain university has already caught the attention of professors from a wide range of prestigious universities including the University of Oxford, Cambridge University, George Mason University, King’s College London, Leipzig University, and Kyoto University.
The original plan to fund the world’s first blockchain university was appropriately going to be through an initial coin offering (ICO), however, Woolf has received enough private funding to forego the need for a public offering.
Malta: Earning the Nickname Blockchain Island
Broggi aims to open five colleges, and eventually plans to work with more than one regulatory partner, however, Malta was the immediate first choice.
Malta has quickly earned a reputation in the blockchain community as being welcoming and eager to push the emerging technology forward with regulatory support. Broggi says this makes Malta “an ideal partner for a borderless university.”
“As an island country, Malta has a long tradition of looking beyond its own borders, and Malta is now developing a robust regulatory framework for distributed ledger technology. Both the educational policies and the blockchain policies are supportive of Woolf’s aims and we look forward to continued work with Malta as they become ‘the blockchain island.’”
Joseph Muscat, Malta’s Prime Minister, has been hard at work to turn Malta into a “Blockchain Island,” in a move to bolster the island nation’s economy. Two of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume, Binance and OKEx, will move their operations to Malta.
Binance CEO and cryptocurrency industry icon Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao praised Malta as “one of the best places” for blockchain companies, as it has been “very welcoming and reasonable” when it comes to regulatory law around blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
The use of digital currency could pose a real threat to credit card companies by pushing down their often exorbitant fees or even by driving some out of business. Even cash is making a comeback in some areas as the public becomes increasingly tired of hearing of credit card companies’ huge profits on the back of …
As an illustration of this frustration, recent system crashes by both Mastercard and Visa recently brought a flood of complaints from Bitcoin loyalists. At the time, Financial Times reported that regulators were “already intensifying their scrutiny of apparent fragilities in the payments system”.
With growing competition across the retail sector, alarm bells should be ringing for the likes of Visa, Mastercard and Amex. Bitcoin is already beginning to look like an obvious replacement, shredding credit card fees and offering quick and transparent payment solutions. Ian DeMartino writes in ‘The Bitcoin Guidebook: How To Obtain, Invest, And Spend The World’s First Decentralized Cryptocurrency‘ that merchants also need to wake up:
“From a merchant perspective, Bitcoin has the advantage of not having large fees from credit card companies that cut into profits… For merchants with small profit margins, that fee could be up half or more of their profits for each credit card transaction.”
As well as a boon to the merchant’s business, power can be shifted away from corporations with ungainly profits back into the hands of those who need the service: the consumers. Kris Marszalek, co-founder and CEO of Cypto.com, sees the current financial climate as perfect timing for a major change in perception by both merchant and consumer, arguing:
“The banking and payment sector is ripe for disruption… The entire credit card business model is focused on wringing money out of people who can’t afford credit card debt: late fees, penalties and high-interest rates.”
The opportunities for simple cryptocurrency payments outside of the credit card system are endless, whether it be payment by fingerprint recognition linked a crypto wallet or a linked crypto debit card. As Arran Stewart, co-owner and CVO of Job.com points out, all that’s stopping this becoming a reality for the general public as a whole is the stability of the cryptocurrency market. This he suggests, “will come in time and as transaction volumes continue to increase”.
Jonah Lehrer, author of ‘How We Decide‘, is not so certain, claiming that people are attached to their credit cards:
“When you buy something with cash, the purchase involves an actual loss — your wallet is literally lighter. Credit cards, however, make the transaction abstract, so that you don’t really feel the downside of spending money.”
Fair comment, but until now the world has lived with a card versus cash scenario. With digital currencies, this is set to change.
If you are a Bitcoin Cash (BCH) proponent you’ve definitely been hearing a lot about the upcoming hard fork scheduled for November 15. Most people have been discussing the conflict between the Bitcoin ABC developers and Nchain’s recently announced Bitcoin SV project. This week Nchain’s Steve Shadders shared a post concerning the Bitcoin SV client […]
If you are a Bitcoin Cash (BCH) proponent you’ve definitely been hearing a lot about the upcoming hard fork scheduled for November 15. Most people have been discussing the conflict between the Bitcoin ABC developers and Nchain’s recently announced Bitcoin SV project. This week Nchain’s Steve Shadders shared a post concerning the Bitcoin SV client that’s due to publish next month. Essentially Shadders explains the Nchain team is not forcing anyone to 128MB blocks; rather they are encouraging miners to configure block size limits themselves.
Lots of people within the Bitcoin Cash community have been debating the recent clash between Nchain and the Bitcoin ABC development team. Over the last few weeks, there’s been a lot going on with this developing story, and more so after Bitcoin ABC published the 0.18 code last week which includes two feature consensus changes — a new opcode called OP_CHECKDATASIG (CDS) will be added and the implementation of canonical transaction ordering (CTOR).
However, Nchain’s project will be another full node client, but the developers won’t be including CDS and CTOR. In contrast to Bitcoin ABC’s code, the Bitcoin SV client will feature the restoration of Satoshi opcodes OP_MUL, OP_LSHIFT, OP_RSHIFT, OP_INVERT, the removal of the 201 opcode script limit, and a block size increase to 128MB. With these differences, if miners choose to operate different clients there could be issues. In preparation for such an event, the statistical data website Coin Dance added a BCH node compatibility page to the portal.
Nchain’s Safe Path to Scaling
With all the debates happening online, Nchain has addressed the public with a blog post called ‘Bitcoin SV and big blocks – A safe path to scaling.’ Nchain’s Steve Shadders explains in the post the Bitcoin SV client is not forcing anyone to 128MB blocks, and they are simply encouraging miners to configure block size limits themselves. Shadders then goes on to define ‘soft caps vs hard caps’ which represent the maximum block size a miner will mine (soft cap) and the maximum size a miner will accept from another miner (hard cap). Shadders details allowing miners to choose the block size allows them to essentially govern the protocol.
Coingeek and Nchain say Bitcoin is 1 CPU = 1 vote. This means, it comes down to hash power.
“The power of miner’s choice — This is precisely what Coingeek and other miners seek to change — Both the soft and hard caps are configuration items that enable miners to exercise the power of governance endowed upon them by the bitcoin system in proportion to their investment,” Shadders explains.
Bitcoin SV supports this and whilst we have no choice but to set default values (you can’t have a configurable setting without them) we do not endorse those values as the best choice and we encourage miners to adjust them as they see fit.
Shadders also emphasizes that there’s an incorrect belief that Bitcoin SV has the intention of forcing users to 128MB blocks. In contrast to this opinion, Shadders says they are simply placing “the configuration settings to a much more prominent place.”
1 CPU = 1 Vote
Coingeek has also responded to the media reports that say the BCH protocol is preparing a “schism or split” this November. In reality, Coingeek states BCH is simply facing another “consensus-seeking mechanism or election.”
“Unlike a national election for presidency, it is not 1 human = 1 vote. It is 1 CPU = 1 Vote — This means, it comes down to hash power — That alone is the consensus-seeking mechanism that was built into Bitcoin since day one and the consensus mechanism that was highlighted in Satoshi’s whitepaper,” explains Coingeek on August 27.
The battle here is over the same BCH blockchain. It is exceedingly unlikely that we will get a split coin in November, since both mining factions are fighting over the BCH ticker and existing eco-system — The hashpower is over one chain in true Nakamoto consensus — No team, is seeking to split into a different coin.
Additionally, Nchain’s chief scientist Craig Wright further discusses Bitcoin SV, uncapped blocks, and canonical transaction ordering (CTOR) further with Reina Nakamoto on August 26.
XT and BU Align
Bitcoin Unlimited and Bitcoin XT plan to align with BIP135.
Lastly, this week news.Bitcoin.com reported on Bitcoin Unlimited’s (BU) plan to implement consensus changes from both organizations, allowing miners the ability to vote for the changesets with hashpower. On August 24 Bitcoin XT developer Tom Harding told his Twitter followers that XT would be aligned with BU and leave the consensus-level changes to miners.
“Bitcoin XT will implement BIP135 and collaborate with other implementations to allow direct activation of forking changes by a supermajority level of mining defined for that activation,” explains Harding.
With everything happening there’s been a lot of action lately with people heavily discussing these topics on social media, Reddit forums, and BCH chat rooms on Slack and Telegram. It’s safe to say this story is not over and news.Bitcoin.com will be there to detail it every step of the way.
If you missed some of the debate earlier, check out the previous articles below:
What do you think about this debate? Let us know what you think about this topic in the comment section below.
Images via Shutterstock, Bitcoin Client Logos, Twitter, and Jamie Redman.
At Bitcoin.com there’s a bunch of free helpful services. For instance, have you seen ourTools page? You can even look up the exchange rate for a transaction in the past. Or calculate the value of your current holdings. Or create a paper wallet. And much more.
Three of the largest cryptocurrency mining hardware manufacturers are preparing to launch initial public offerings (IPOs) in Hong Kong. However, the crypto price slump and regulatory issues could negatively impact on the success of said offerings. Is the Demand Still There to Necessitate IPOs? Bitmain, Canaan Inc., and Ebang International Holdings are the three largest…
Three of the largest cryptocurrency mining hardware manufacturers are preparing to launch initial public offerings (IPOs) in Hong Kong. However, the crypto price slump and regulatory issues could negatively impact on the success of said offerings.
Is the Demand Still There to Necessitate IPOs?
Bitmain, Canaan Inc., and Ebang International Holdings are the three largest producers of Bitcoin mining equipment on the planet.
The three are all currently preparing to launch independent initial public offerings in Hong Kong.
However, experts believe that falling cryptocurrency prices this year will lessen demand for mining units. Potential investors should therefore be wary about taking part in these offerings. An executive at consultancy firm Quinlan & Associates explained:
“The marked decline in the price of bitcoin since the start of the year is likely to weigh on investors’ interest in these companies… [Yet] the fall in the price of bitcoin from its peaks has not been matched by an equivalent fall in the numbers of people mining it.”
Julian Hosp, the president of blockchain firm TenX added that coins could switch mining algorithms too, which makes investing in such an offering even riskier. However, since Bitmain themselves make up a large portion of the Bitcoin hash rate, it would be incredibly foolish for them to back a change that would render their own hardware redundant.
Canaan Inc. filed plans for their offering in May. It hopes to raise at least $400 million from an IPO. Concerns about the future of the market have meant that the firm has since reduced its initial target figure of $2 billion. According to a report in Reuters, Canaan chips accounted for around 14% of the entire Bitcoin mining market last year.
Meanwhile, Ebang International is aiming to raise as much as $1 billion. Its offering is thought to be ready for consideration by the listing committee in September. The plans themselves were filed in June of this year.
Dwarfing them all is Bitmain. Their chips accounted for a massive three quarters of the mining market last year. Reports on their goals for their IPO have varied tremendously. At the upper end of estimates, figures as large as $18 billion have been cited. It is now thought that Bitmain aims to raise a still-impressive $3 billion in their offering. That said, concerns about the management of Bitmain itself have been raised in relation to their IPO.
In addition to the above concerns over demand and potential (although unlikely) technological problems, there are also regulatory issues with the future of cryptocurrencies, as well as the IPOs themselves. The Reuters article cites sources “close” to the various deals as being “aware” of the regulatory scrutiny on the industry.
In light of questionable demand for Bitcoin hardware going forward, the companies are keen to stress that their powerful chips can be put to other uses other than cryptocurrency mining. Other blockchain applications, AI tools, and 5G telecoms, are mentioned as potential use cases for the specialised hardware.
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, Malta’s pro-cryptocurrency prime minister, has been the subject of a recent Instagram scam. Muscat was targeted by conmen using his name to open a fake Instagram account, in an attempt to promote a Bitcoin investment scheme. The fake account quickly attracted around 1,300 followers with the promise of “enormous return on …
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, Malta’s pro-cryptocurrency prime minister, has been the subject of a recent Instagram scam.
Muscat was targeted by conmen using his name to open a fake Instagram account, in an attempt to promote a Bitcoin investment scheme.
The fake account quickly attracted around 1,300 followers with the promise of “enormous return on investments within a month’s time”. A suggestion that potential investors should contact a “Wang Wei” was made using Prime Minister Muscat’s name, but then the account was quickly removed from Instagram.
Muscat has long been an advocate of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, pushing Malta into the forefront of the industry taking it to third most “crypto-friendly” nation, according to a BlockShow Europe study earlier this year.
Not only is the small country planning to host the world’s first regulation-ready decentralized bank, but Malta’s PM has openly expressed a desire for his country to become the world’s number one blockchain hub.
The island has become increasingly appealing to Bitcoin companies conducting business there due to its positive spin on blockchain technology and its open-minded approach to regulation, linked to a strong economy. It also boasts the largest cryptocurrency trading volume in the world, according to Morgan Stanley. With this new legal-certainty status for cryptocurrencies, the country’s claim as another European “crypto haven” to rival Switzerland may be well founded.
The using of prominent names to set up fake schemes has been particularly popular in the UK of late with a number of TV celebrities being targeted. One is the subject of a legal case against Facebook after money saving expert Martin Lewis was targetted. Alan Sugar, British entrepreneur and presenter of TV’s ‘The Apprentice’, told the UK’s Mail on Sunday that scam cryptocurrency deals targeting celebrities were becoming a routine for many prominent business people.
Others who have suffered damage to their reputations due to crypto crime including Bill Gates, Virgin Boss Richard Branston, and BBC Dragon’s Den’s panel member Deborah Meaden.
If you are a Bitcoin Cash (BCH) proponent you’ve definitely been hearing a lot about the upcoming hard fork scheduled for November 15. Most people have been discussing the conflict between the Bitcoin ABC developers and Nchain’s recently announced Bitcoin SV project. This week Nchain’s Steve Shadders shared a post concerning the Bitcoin SV client […]
