Consensus 2018
On Monday, May 14, the largest blockchain conference Consensus 2018 began in New York. The speakers and guests of the event were the most prominent representatives of the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry, despite the absence of some of them. Recall that the day before, the creator of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin and the OmiseGO project team announced a boycott of the conference due to a number of disagreements with the organizers of Consensus 2018 – CoinDesk.
During the event, representatives of the US regulators CFTC and SEC stated that their departments do not want to harm the cryptocurrency industry. However, they stressed that regulators will always act in the interests of investors and actively fight fraudsters. Recall that at the beginning of the month the SEC had already expressed such a position, stating that “investors cannot distinguish a real project from fraud”.
At Consensus 2018, of course, they also talked about the future of cryptocurrencies. Thus, Blockstream engineer Christian Dekker said that thanks to the implementation Lightning Network Bitcoin's network capacity could surpass major payment systems such as Visa. In addition, during the event, the startup Enigma also presented the “secret contracts” protocol for the first time, and the Ethereum company ConsenSys entered into a partnership with Amazon Web Services. Various actions were also organized at Consensus 2018 - for example, fake bankers protested against Bitcoin.
It is worth noting that many analysts believed that the conference would have a positive effect on the cryptocurrency market. Even Tom Lee claimed that, against the background of Consensus 2018, the price of bitcoin would skyrocket to $ 15 000, however, he later admitted his mistake and told why his prediction did not come true.
cryptocurrency
This week in the Bitcoin Cash network, the previously announced hardfork took place, according to the results of which the block size increased to 32 MB. In addition, functions have now become available in the code for implementing smart contracts and other solutions. Note, holding another hard forks in the network is scheduled for November this year.
Startup Circle, which recently acquired the Poloniex exchange, and cryptocurrency mining equipment manufacturer Bitmain will release an analogue of the tokenized Tether dollar. The coin, called USD-C, is positioned as an open source project with a more advanced governance model than USDT. Circle noted that they see “a lot of bottlenecks and problems associated with this token” in the latter, and these problems will be solved in their project. It is worth noting that the tokenized dollar from Tether is often criticized by various experts - for example, in February, the Weiss Ratings rating agency warned investors about the risks associated with USDT and stated that Tether poses a serious threat to the cryptocurrency market.
The interest in the Ethereum, the second most capitalized cryptocurrency, was demonstrated this week by the CME Group. Initially, the platform announced the launch of the Ethereum benchmark course and the ETH / USD index, and then it became known that the CME Group is exploring the possibility of launching Ethereum futures. Recall that in December last year, the exchange began trading in bitcoin futures.
The Chinese authorities have published the first rating of cryptocurrencies, which was led by Ethereum. In total, 28 digital currencies were considered, which were evaluated according to three criteria - areas of application, innovation and the technology itself. It is noteworthy that Bitcoin was only in 13th place in this list, having received a high rating only for innovation. Recall that the Chinese authorities will publish a monthly rating of cryptocurrencies, it became known last week.
Regulation
This week, two European countries at once expressed their intention to create a national cryptocurrency - first, the emergence of the e-franc was discussed in the Swiss government, and then in the Central Bank of Norway. It is worth noting that these countries do not have a clear action plan, and so far various departments will only study the benefits and risks of the emergence of a national digital currency.
On Monday, another bill was presented in Russia to unify the regulation of cryptocurrencies, which regulates financial digital rights and their circulation. In addition, this week it became known that Russian cryptocurrency investors will be required to register in a special register - they will have to provide their passport data and TIN, as well as link their digital wallet to these data. The register will be maintained by the Ministry of Finance or the Central Bank.
In Ukraine, a draft law on the legalization of cryptocurrencies was published in the public domain and called on the local crypto community to join its finalization. It is expected that the final text of the document should be formed within two weeks. Recall that in Ukraine, active work is underway to develop regulations for the crypto industry - recently the National Commission on Securities and Stock Market of the country proposed to recognize cryptocurrencies as a financial instrument, and last month two petitions appeared in Ukraine to regulate the region. In one of them, they called for the creation of a working group to develop regulation of the crypto market, and in the other, they asked to refrain from introducing any regulation of the circulation of bitcoin at all.