MY FAVOURITE
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These companies keep the eco-system of blockchain alive.
When you write about blockchain and cryptocurrency you tend to get a lot of emails offering CEO interviews, background on emerging ICOs and everything in between.
I thought it would be interesting to go through some of the companies who have reached out to me and take a look at exactly what they do and who they serve. I was amazed to see that a full-service industry now exists to propel that startup (the one you haven’t heard of yet) to glory, and so I dived a bit deeper to figure out just what help a successful ICO might need.
Indeed, the industry isn’t made up of blockchain companies alone; there are vital supporting services that make up the ecosystem. Despite having a science-fiction/futuristic ring to it— the blockchain industry is no lone wolf. In the world of financial technology, it really is evolve or die.
So here are my top 3 from each section of the blockchain and crypto industry of who I believe are pushing the boundaries, from accounting services to tokenomics.
Accounting Services
Preparing and examining financial records is no easy task and in a relatively new industry, some of these expenses and purchases may be foreign to accountants who have not worked with blockchain and cryptocurrency companies before. Here are a few of the best crypto-accounting companies out there who have managed to get their heads around it.
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Commerce CPA specializes in helping Bitcoin and cryptocurrency users around tax season. The commerce CPA staff are familiar with a number of cryptocurrencies ranging from big names like Bitcoin and Ethereum to smaller altcoins like Zcash, and their team can help consumers with auditing, accounting, and consulting as well.
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The team at Azran financial are considered thought leaders when it comes to cryptocurrency accounting solutions and taxation. From ICO’s to STO’s to cryptocurrency airdrops, the team at Azran has a deep understanding of blockchain technologies and its relationship with regulation.
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Crypto CPAs is an accounting firm that specializes in blockchain and cryptocurrency. The firm services individuals with cryptocurrency investments, and ICO projects in need of tax and accounting services.
Conferences
Community building is an essential part of reaching out to the mainstream audience and ensuring that a blockchain project maintains enough following to keep going for many years to come; because of this, companies organize blockchain events on a regular basis, especially since cryptocurrency enthusiasts are known to spend large sums of money for these events.
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The United Nations (UN) has been looking to blockchain technology to solve social issues. For those who are looking for ideas on what to tokenize, high-level forums such as those by the UN would provide very valuable insights. After all, the best products in the world are those that deliver a real need.
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Silicon Valley wouldn’t be caught dead behind everybody else, particularly with a technology so big, that even those who don’t understand it keep talking about it. On November 28-29, the ambitiously named event, “The World’s Largest Blockchain Conference and Exhibition,” will bring big names in the industry together.
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Dubai has always been on a quest to position itself as one of the most forward-thinking cities in the world. The Dubai International Blockchain Summit on August 9 hosted over 5,000 delegates, including several start-up founders, at Atlantis the Palm Hotel.
Developments
In an industry as new as blockchain and cryptocurrency, it can be challenging to come across individuals with the expertise to develop blockchain-based software and hardware. Fortunately, there are a number of companies in the industry willing to assist you with this task.
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Tecsynt helps companies create blockchain-based mobile phone applications. The team at Tecsynt are well-versed in blockchain and cryptocurrency and can help clients when it comes to developing programs and making decisions. A few of Tecsynt’s clients include Freemo, Hawkist, and DermDash.
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Toptal connects their clients to a pool of talent that can create the blockchain based software and hardware that they are looking for. After hearing about project goals, Toptal leverages their vast network of blockchain engineers and connects customers to developers that are the perfect fit for their project.
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Peerbits offers a range of blockchain development services; from private blockchain development to wallet development solutions, Peerbits’ team of experienced blockchain specialists can tackle any problem their clients are facing and create solutions.Investment Funds The amount of money coming into the blockchain industry has been quite overwhelming.
Some even predict that the bitcoin market cap alone will shoot up to the trillion-dollar mark at some point in the near future and financial professionals have taken notice of the opportunity.
Unsurprisingly, traditional investors have been seeping into blockchain investing, and investment funds are an easy transition that saves investors from a lot of headaches.
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Protocol Ventures was started in 2017 by serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist Rick Marini. Protocol Ventures is an investment fund that invests in cryptocurrency hedge funds. The company identifies the top ten hedge funds based on historical and expected performance, quality of fund managers, and quality of investment strategies, and backs these companies in hopes of healthy returns.
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Pantera Capital is a blockchain-focused investment fund founded in 2013, making it the first US Bitcoin investment firm in history. They have a portfolio of industry heavyweights, including Bitcoin.org, ShapeShift, Augur, Abra, Civic, Omisego, and Ripple.
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Based in London, Eterna Capital was formed by a group of ex BlackRock analysts with a solid understanding of traditional markets and blockchain tech. The fund is special as it focuses on projects and teams that value social impact and incorporate it into their business models.
Marketing Agencies
Despite what some may believe, the success or failure of a company isn’t always about being the best, or “getting there first.” Many times, success is bolstered by other less quantifiable factors, like user experience and community relations.
An explosive marketing strategy can help start-ups make their entry into the market, even when it’s already crowded with industry giants; this cannot be truer in the blockchain industry.
Keeping an organization in and ahead of the game is a constant investment that should never be undervalued, pre and post-ICO.
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Making the top of the list is Verma Media, which, within only about a year propelled over 80 projects into over $220 million in funding. With Verma’s track record, it quickly became a household name for blockchain founders. The “decentralized marketing agency” offers full-service marketing, landing big clients like Consensus, Patron, Muirfield, and Substratum, among many others.
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Wachsman PR, founded in 2015, prides itself with its media relations services, strategic advisory, event production, and “crisis communications”—something all-too-familiar with all the hacks and controversies the blockchain industry experiences on a regular basis.
Some of Wachsman’s most well-known clients are Dash, Coindesk, Steemit, and the controversial Bitfinex—which in itself would have been rigorously testing Wachsman’s damage control skills.
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Another blockchain-focused PR firm worth watching is Melrose, a California-based agency strategically located in Silicon Beach, where over 500 tech startup companies reside.
The firm has worked with several startups focusing on fields like AI, healthcare, advertising, and online gaming. Among their clients are SingularityNET, DAO.
Casino, and Blockdaemon.Smart ContractsSmart contracts are the blood of decentralized applications. Any flaws within this code could spell trouble for a company and its founders—legal, financial, and reputational. But at the same time, experienced blockchain developers are hard to come by.
Fortunately, some have taken it upon themselves to put some order into the developer shortage by offering these services through firms. And because these jobs are highly complex and utterly crucial (multi-million-dollar hack level crucial), it’s best to leave this job to the experts.
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Hosho.io nabs the number one spot on this list due to their reliable security services and track record in smart contract auditing. The blockchain security firm, comprised of experienced white hat hackers, is a partner to the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance.
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US-based firm Zeppelin Solutions boasts of having networks worth over $4.5 billion built using their systems. Apart from security audits for decentralized applications (DApps), the company also builds open-source infrastructure to make it easier for new developers to create complex blockchain applications.
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Blockchain outsourcing company Prolitus is an ISO 9001 & ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certified firm and is a partner to Google and Amazon Web Services. They currently operate in Ireland, USA, and India.
Tokenomics Strategy
Not only did blockchain technology forge the birth of parallel industries, but it has also given rise to the creation of entirely new fields of study—tokenomics being one of them. The field governs the purpose, mechanics, and economic design of a token ecosystem, as well as the incentive structure within it. This is a crucial pre-launch aspect in an entirely new “science,” therefore tokenomics specialists are highly sought after, yet not easily found.
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Yeoman’s Capital is an investment firm created by early Bitcoin adopters. “We only invest if we can also make a meaningful impact as advisors,” their website says. And to show everyone they mean business, the firm clearly states, “No Free Lambos,” on their website. “We work hard & deploy our own money.”
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Boasting a team of several blockchain analysts, advisers, and technologists, International Blockchain Consulting (IBC) specifically positions their firm as one whose niche is in a tokenomics advisory.
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BlockchainSaw is a blockchain development firm that also offers smart contract auditing—something the industry is in dire need of. Unlike investment firms and consultancies that provide advisory services, BlockchainSaw does the dirty work for token creators.
I have worked for broadcasters such as the BBC, BFBS and the Press Association before becoming a full-time freelance journalist in 2016.
Previously I had written on the FinTech sector for both national and niche publications, but it was the Brexit referendum that sparked my ... MORE
See more on what I'm writing here or say hi on Twitter @ginadav-
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Francisco Gimeno - BC Analyst Blockchain industry is amazingly creative. we will find myriad of solutions based on blockchain for blockchain start ups themselves, or related to crypto industries, which didn't exist even two years ago. We can even say that within a short time more and better companies will be launched offering new and exciting developments.- 10 1 vote
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The price of bitcoin has been ticking back up after a precipitous drop from $6,500 at the beginning of the month to $3,600 this week. That low marked an almost 40 percent decline over the past month, 60 percent over the past year, and 80 percent from its height.
My own .0016 of a bitcoin, purchased for $20 to illustrate such transactions for viewers like you last April, was worth $13 after transaction costs. It’s now worth about $4.
In just the last 48 hours, the cryptocurrency has gained back some of its losses and was valued around $4,300 as of Wednesday afternoon.
So what should we take away from bitcoin’s turmoil?
Back in the fall of 2013, the eminent business historian Richard Sylla told the NewsHour that he could eventually see bitcoin becoming as pricey as gold or worth nothing at all. At the time, one bitcoin was selling for about $125, a seemingly extravagant price given that a coin cost just $15 bucks at the beginning of that year.
Bitcoin has since far surpassed the value of gold. Even with the recent drop, one bitcoin is still worth well more than three ounces of gold. The fact is, after-the-fact investing is the only sure route to riches, especially when it comes to almost entirely speculative investments. And that’s what bitcoin would seem to be.
It remains a pain to buy, sell or safely hold — see our explanation from last April or the story of the man who threw away the hard drive that held the codes to his bitcoins worth $80 million. He has decided to mine the landfill where he thinks the hard drive may have ended up. And because of bitcoin’s price volatility, it’s even more of a pain to use as currency, its primary raison d’etre.
That is except of course its use for nefarious purposes because it’s supposedly untraceable and therefore more suitable than most alternatives. The mayor of Plattsburgh New York told me that arrests for contraband cash coming across the Canadian border are down sharply since the advent of bitcoin.
This sort of volatility was not supposed to happen. Bitcoin and other “cryptocurrencies” were touted as alternatives to the feckless “fiat” currency reckless governments supposedly churn out; “fiat” as in “let there be. ”“Fiat lux”, said the creator, according to Abrahamic tradition: “let there be light. ” And there was light.
“Let there be dollars,” says the Federal Reserve, and lo, dollars materialize out of thin air. Indeed the sky itself is barely the limit. And if you can keep creating more dollars, the argument goes, or euros, or yen, yuan or won, they will lose their value through inflation — eventually, pretty much all their value.“Arrantly irresponsible,” cried the skeptics.
There had to be a safer, more credible way to mint money than just leaving the job to governments. Enter, stage center, bitcoin: a currency controlled — like gold — by no one, but better than gold, since there’s an absolute limit on the total number of bitcoins that can ever be mined.
Bitcoin — or maybe some other cryptocurrency — would replace fiat currencies as the coin of all realms soon enough, safe from the ravages of inflation.
WATCH: The how and why of buying bitcoin
This spring, I had lunch with a skeptic of a different persuasion: a bitcoin skeptic. His name is Robert Merton, and he won the Nobel Prize in Economics in the 1990s for his contributions to investment theory. Bitcoin’s price was dropping at the time, but still more than double what it is today.
Merton was acerbic.“It’s not a currency!” he insisted.Unfortunately for investing viewers, perhaps, we never got around to it. But with bitcoin continuing its descent, I wrote to ask him what he was thinking now. And here’s his answer:
“The only possible legal tender currency is one controlled by government,” Merton writes. “Fiat but legal tender currencies actually have intrinsic value because by law they can be used to settle all tax and other payments to the government and they MUST be accepted as payment for obligations denominated in that currency.
”Now it so happens that Ohio just became the first state in the country to accept bitcoin for a variety of taxes, though only businesses are eligible thus far. But it would be a stretch to say that as Ohio goes, so goes the nation.The problem with bitcoin at the moment: It is not a government-controlled currency.
The problem with bitcoin at the moment, despite Ohio, is just what its champions decry: It is not a government-controlled currency. And therefore, asks Merton, who is responsible for the value of our currency if tomorrow morning all the bitcoin screens go dark?
And suppose governments like the U.S. or China or the EU were to declare it illegal? Indeed, with its use by terrorists and criminals to move money, “governments have good reasons to make it illegal,” Merton writes. “Recall that owning gold coins or bullion by U.S. citizens was illegal in U.S. from 1933 to 1975 and so gold could never have been a currency in the U.S. during that time.
”Moreover, governments are now considering their own rival to would-be currencies like bitcoin: Central Bank Digital Currencies, aka CBDC’s. Here’s one of my favorite skeptics, NYU economist Nouriel Roubini, who called the real estate crash of 2008 on the PBS NewsHour — in 2006.
What Roubini was thinking about bitcoin just last week is summed up by his headline: Why Central Bank Digital Currencies Will Destroy Cryptocurrencies.
But if all this is true, how can bitcoin still be worth anything at all, much less $4,000 a coin, up from pennies — or at least single-digit dollars — at conception not that many years ago?
“I believe that all but the most diehard bitcoiners have given up on bitcoin as a currency,” answers Merton, “and have changed its use to being a store of value.
When asked what value it has, they point to gold,” which sells for far more than it would for a strictly practical, commercial purposes. If ever there were a clear example of speculation instead of investment, that is, bitcoin would be it.“Indeed,” writes Merton, “[bitcoin enthusiasts] often call it electronic gold.” Does it use ridiculous amount of electricity to mine, as we detailed in a story last year?
Sure, the bitcoin bunch point to the huge amount of energy that goes into mining gold.But look, concludes Merton, “no one really has a good theory of the price of gold. It’s a puzzle. And so I believe it’s a sign of how desperate the bitcoiners have become that the only argument for bitcoin as a serious store of value is by analogy to something whose value we don’t understand its value!
”As for the safety of bitcoin as an investment, protected by the distributed network of computers that comprise the blockchain, “the idea that bitcoin or for that matter blockchain does not require trust is nonsense. ” It’s based on a model of how things should work — a concept; a set of techniques. But everything can fail.
How do we know the blockchain model isn’t flawed? Or that it doesn’t have a backdoor by which the creator can come in and empty your account?Merton’s final thought is a warning from another trendy cryptocurrency, Ripple, down more than 80 percent from its high.
“Ripple had to create a ‘referee’ to declare the blockchain valid instead of going through the entire chain each time because it was sooooo slow. But then one has to trust the referee.”And so we end where the whole cryptocurrency craze began.
Bitcoin, like any currency — like any store of value — is based on trust. Once that trust dissipates, who can say how much value is in the store? I should add a postscript: this does not mean that blockchain — the technology behind bitcoin and the several thousand other so-called cryptocurrencies and applications out there — is similarly unstable.
Blockchain is a way of using computers and the Internet to validate any sort of transaction, getting rid of the bureaucratic middleman. It’s a story of another newsletter. But it holds out great hopes for efficiency in a bureaucratized world.- By Admin
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- Jeff Sprecher, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, says bitcoin and other digital assets are here to stay.
- Sprecher is also CEO of the Intercontinental Exchange, which is teaming with Microsoft and Starbucks to launch Bakkt, a company that will facilitate bitcoin futures in January.
- “We’re creating that infrastructure that doesn’t exist today, which we think is a big opportunity for institutional investors to come in,” Bakkt CEO Kelly Loeffler says
Lucas Jackson | ReutersJeff Sprecher
Bitcoin got the backing of a critical figurehead on Wall Street this week.Jeff Sprecher, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange and CEO of its parent company, Intercontinental Exchange, said that despite headlines of cryptocurrencies flopping, digital assets have a future in regulated markets.
When asked about the dropping prices, Sprecher brought up a perennial question posed by critics: "Will digital assets survive?"
"The unequivocal answer is yes," he said on stage at the Consensus: Invest conference on Tuesday. "As an exchange operator it's not our objective to opine on prices.
"Sprecher's Intercontinental Exchange, along with Starbucks, Microsoft and BCG, is backing a new company called Bakkt that will facilitate bitcoin futures trading by the first quarter of next year.
The initial launch was set for November 2018, but the company announced last week it would push that debut back to January.Kelly Loeffler, chief executive officer of Bakkt, gave some details on the decision. She explained that the original timeline was ambitious and the customer pipeline filled up quickly.
"To give it the best chance for success we pushed it back to the holidays to give people more time to get on board," Loeffler said. "It's a positive indication of the interest and it gives people time to learn. We have a responsibility to do that so we're taking that extra time.
"Bakkt is starting with bitcoin, which is regulated by the Commody Futures Trading Commission. The company's role, as Loeffler explained it, is to provide custody and price discovery for bitcoin that's free from fraud and manipulation. Prices now tend to fluctuate depending on the exchange, which in many cases are unregulated.
"We're creating that infrastructure that doesn't exist today, which we think is a big opportunity for institutional investors to come in," Loeffler said.Another key difference is how the futures contracts will settle.
Bakkt's bitcoin futures will settle in bitcoin. Existing bitcoin futures on the CME and CBOE, which began trading in December, settle in cash. Those futures contracts this week hit their lowest prices since they began trading last year.
The Nasdaq and VanEck also plan to launch bitcoin futures in the first quarter of 2019.Bitcoin prices jumped as much as 16 percent Wednesday after hitting a new 14-month low over the weekend. The world's largest cryptocurrency was trading around $4,300 as of 3:55 p.m. ET.Bitcoin as a benchmark
While it might not have the best technology of all cryptocurrencies, bitcoin will still likely emerge as the yardstick by which all others are measured, Sprecher said.
"Somehow bitcoin has lived in a swamp and survived," Sprecher said.
"There are thousands of other tokens that you could argue are better but yet bitcoin continues to survive, thrive and attract attention.
"Sprecher, who is married to Loeffler, likened it to the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
The "Dow" as it's known, is an index of 30 stocks that is price-weighted, meaning it gives higher-priced stocks more influence but doesn't take into account the industry size or market cap. "The Dow has been around for decades. It's a terrible index.
We could come up with an index that's more representative of our economy but somehow that index will not go away," Sprecher said. Dow critics say it's not an accurate representation of market performance.
Yet, it's the most widely used barometer. Similarly bitcoin has flaws, but Sprecher said it's still likely to be the go-to cryptocurrency.
"Often times in finance, it's not about being the best — it turns out to be about being the broadest and the most commonly accepted and for whatever reason bitcoin has become that."
Kate Rooney
Markets Reporter- By Admin
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Blockchain Venture Summit‘te Blockchain ekosisteminin nabzı tutuldu. Konferansımızda blockchain teknolojisinin önümüzde açabileceği yeni ufuklar tartışıldı ve günümüz girişimlerine dair akıllara takılan sorular cevap buldu.
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Cryptocurrency enthusiasts have been eagerly awaiting the approval of what would be the first-ever bitcoin exchange-traded fund, or ETF.
But the man largely behind greenlighting one — Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton — has a few worries that need to be assuaged before he's "comfortable" approving the investment vehicle.The first is a lack of market surveillance.
Because most cryptocurrency exchanges don't use the same monitoring tools as stock exchanges, Clayton said investors may not get a fair assessment of bitcoin's price.
"What investors expect is that trading in the commodity that underlies that ETF makes sense and is free from the risk of manipulation," Clayton said at the Consensus Invest Conference in Manhattan.
"It's an issue that needs to be addressed before I would be comfortable."The New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq have what's known as "surveillance," or systems that monitor, prevent and investigate abusive and manipulative activity on the exchanges.
"Those kinds of safeguards do not exist currently in all of the exchange venues where digital currencies trade," Clayton said.There are outliers though. In April, Nasdaq announced a collaboration with digital currency exchange Gemini, founded by early bitcoin investors Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss.
The deal gives Gemini access to Nasdaq's surveillance technology to help make sure the platform provides a fair and "rules-based marketplace" for their own participants, Gemini CEO Tyler Winklevoss said in a statement.
Exchange-traded funds track an index or group of assets but trade like stocks. Analysts say the approval of one could bring in a wave of institutional buyers and because bitcoin has a fixed supply theoretically push up prices.
The agency has rejected multiple applications for a cryptocurrency ETF. In its decision not to approve the Winklevoss brothers' ETF, the SEC pointed to the risks of fraud and market manipulation and the challenge of investor protection.Custody needs to be 'improved'
How to safely store these assets is a major roadblock. While bitcoin'sprice itself is certainly volatile, investors could also be exposed to a risk of theft in the underlying asset.
"We've seen some thefts around digital assets that make you scratch your head," Clayton told Silver Lake Partners' Glenn Hutchins, who moderated the panel. "We care that the assets underlying that ETF have good custody, and that they're not going to disappear.
"There are dozens of cryptocurrency custody solutions that have either been announced or are already on the market. Fidelity said in October that it was launching a separate company to handle cryptocurrency custody and trade execution for institutional investors.
Crypto companies Coinbase, Gemini, BitGo, Ledger and ItBit are among those already working on similar solutions. Japanese bank Nomura also announced plans in May to offer crypto custody, and Goldman Sachs and Northern Trust are reportedly exploring custodial services.
But until Fidelity, there had been a noticeable lack of big U.S.-based incumbents officially entering the space. Despite the options, Clayton said custody offerings still "need to be improved and hardened."'Assume' your ICO is a security
Clayton also had a message for those issuing initial coin offerings: Chances are, it's subject to SEC laws."You should start with the assumption that you're starting with a securities offering," Clayton said.In June, Clayton made it clear that the agency won't bend the rules for cryptocurrency when it comes to defining what is or what isn't a security.
He told CNBC at the time that the U.S. has built a $19 trillion securities market that's "the envy of the world" following the current rules.Whether an asset is a security right now follows the "Howey Test.
" The ruling comes from a 1946 U.S. Supreme Court case that classifies a security as an investment of money in a common enterprise, in which the investor expects profits primarily from others' efforts.
The SEC has said explicitly that bitcoin and ether are treated as commodities and therefore aren't subject to that test. But all other cryptocurrencies are still seen by the SEC as securities and need to register with the agency.
The SEC has penalized multiple cryptocurrency projects that failed to do so. Earlier in November, the agency announced its first civil penalties against founders who did not register new coin offerings, adding to its crackdown aimed at abuses and outright fraud in the growing digital industry.
Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency, was trading near $3,760 Tuesday, down more than 80 percent from its all-time high in December, according to data from CoinDesk.
Kate Rooney
Markets Reporter-
Francisco Gimeno - BC Analyst When SEC talks, we carefully listen and analyse. Optimistic will look at the issue of BTC and Eth being considered commodities and the rest of cryptos securities, and that ETFs are on the way when exchanges and companies comply with regulations. Others will just see that ICOs are mainly considered securities and that it will be difficult an a long way until exchanges and companies can comply with SEC regulations for US market . Conclusion: a lot of work ahead to clarify the basic terms for a digital economy which is coming anyway. We have a lot of work and little time for it.
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This market trading analysis applies to various exchanges, including Bitmex and Binance. Tackling questions like if Bitcoin can reach 20k again and if we will be seeing a crypto currency market recovery this year.
Things like the lightning network have provided huge improvements for BTC and while it is true that others like Roger Ver with Bitcoin Cash (bcash) may disagree, I do see these blockchain technology innovations to be very bullish fundamental signs for the space.
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Francisco Gimeno - BC Analyst We like traders give their opinion on cryptos as they have interesting opinions, trying to rationalise what is going on in the markets. Whatever is going on, anyway, retail investors are suffering the most, and the idea of a bully market is yet far in time. Those who think in long term for blockchain and crypto will be hodling and investing yet. Time will say.
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