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This week in crypto: IOTA coordicide testnet goes public, EU to regulate crypto and old man yells at Bitcoin

Harry Hamburg
Harry Hamburg
6 min read
This week in crypto: IOTA coordicide testnet goes public, EU to regulate crypto and old man yells at Bitcoin

I haven’t really got an overriding theme for this week’s issue. It’s just going to be a mish mash of the most interesting crypto stories that have turned up this week.

Starting with…

IOTA’s public Coordicide testnet is scheduled for release next week

I only found out about this literally a few minutes ago, and I haven’t seen it picked up by any of the bigger crypto sites yet. But it’s pretty major news if you’ve been following the IOTA story.

From crypto-news-flash.com (which I’ve never actually seen before, but the story is legit as you can see from the links to the IOTA team’s tweets)

The launch of the first public IOTA Coordicide testnet might be sooner than expected. After last week’s announcement that the new GoShimmer version v.0.2.0 is in its final stages and the release is planned for the end of June, it seems that this release has now been brought forward. Yesterday Angelo Capossele, a senior research scientist at the IOTA Foundation, wrote via Twitter:

Source: Twitter

In response, Hans Moog, software developer at the IOTA Foundation, announced that the first public Coordicide testnet will be released within the next days.

Until now, the Coordicide Testnet was only available as an internal alphanet in version 0.1.x. The version was released in early February and included basic features like autopeering, gossip, rate control and an interface to send data 0 value transactions and to query the Tangle. The new version 0.2.0 will be much more comprehensive in its scope of functions and will also include the new consensus model, the “Parallel Reality Based Ledger State”. In this sense, Moog continued and explained:

This will be the first time that we have most of the building blocks of coordicide in an actual node implementation. There will most probably be minor bugs and things that need to be fixed but from this point on we will not only be able to gather the first real live metrics but we will also be able to have much faster iterations between consecutive versions.

So this is a really important milestone on our way to coordicide and I am very much looking forward to introduce a lot of new and and exciting concepts + features in the coming weeks.

The EU is planning a new “regulatory regime” for crypto

Remember all the fuss that Facebook’s Libra announcement caused?

Well, it seems European regulators are getting ready to make some new laws to stop things like that happening again anytime soon.

From Coin Desk:

The [EU’s] lead economics minister, Valdis Dombrovskis – or to give him his full title, the European Union’s Executive Vice President of the European Commission for An Economy that Works for People – said Europe had to seize the opportunity to become one of the main rule-makers for digital finance.

“This is a good chance for Europe to strengthen its international standing and to become a global standard-setter, with European companies leading new technologies for digital finance,” he said during a speech at the Digital Finance Outreach 2020 earlier this week.

And the first test case, Dombrovskis said, would be cryptocurrencies.

Although some cryptos, such as security tokens, are pretty well covered by European law, whole bundles of them, most notably stablecoins, remain entirely unregulated.

“Lack of legal certainty is often cited as the main barrier to developing a sound crypto-asset market in the EU,” Dombrovskis said.

Some EU members have taken matters into their own hands, which damages market integration and makes it difficult for companies to operate across the whole trading bloc.

A new regulatory regime for cryptocurrency will not only cover unregulated digital assets, but it will also consolidate and homogenize existing standards across the continent, Dombrovskis said.

Meanwhile New York is easing its notoriously strict BitLicense regulation

From Reuters:

New York’s financial regulator on Wednesday proposed new licensing rules that would make it easier for companies to engage in cryptocurrency business in the state.

The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) is asking for the public’s input about the plan by Aug. 10. The initiative stems from the “actual or perceived hurdles” that firms may face in obtaining the state’s “BitLicense,” unveiled in 2015, the regulator said.

New York’s proposed framework would allow companies that want to engage in virtual currency business activity in the state to obtain a conditional license, through which they would collaborate with fully licensed companies, NYDFS said.

…while bringing in a three-strike rule for BitLicense applicants…

From Coin Desk:

New York’s financial watchdog has warned crypto companies that their BitLicense applications could be thrown out without warning if its feedback is not heeded.

In an update Wednesday, New York’s Department of Financial Services (DFS) said a new three-strikes rule would authorize it to deny any applications that didn’t address or consider any deficiencies highlighted by the regulator.

The warning reads, “[I]f all deficiencies involving a particular application requirement or set of requirements have not been fully and effectively addressed by the end of the response period for the third deficiency letter … the DFS may, without further notice, deny the application.”

The new rule coincides with the fifth anniversary of the BitLicense, which saw the regulator update its framework for businesses, like exchanges and wallets providers, to operate legally in New York State. To date, only 25 companies have been approved, with 19 receiving actual licenses and six receiving limited purpose trust charters.

So in a strange tun of events, New York is planning to both make it easier AND harder to get its highly controversial BitLicense.

Old man yells at bitcoin (again)

This next story has been gaining a fair amount of coverage in the cryptosphere this week. But from what I can see, it was probably just an offhand comment that has been blown out of proportion.

However, as you probably know, “legendary” investors yelling at bitcoin has always been a favourite meme of the crypto community. So when it happens, it tends to make a splash.

From Asia Times:

Legendary investor Jim Rogers has warned bitcoin and similar “virtual currencies beyond the influence of the government” will not be allowed to survive – and said the bitcoin price is headed to zero.

“If the cryptocurrency succeeds as real money, rather than the subject of gambling as it is today, the government will make the cryptocurrency illegal and eliminate it,” Rogers told Japan’s Aera dot in comments translated by Google.

JPMorgan announces Bitcoin is more resilient than traditional currencies, equities, treasures and gold

From news.bitcoin.com:

JPMorgan’s strategists have reportedly found bitcoin’s market structure to be more resilient than those of currencies, equities, Treasuries, and gold. In a new report on bitcoin’s stress test, JPMorgan wrote that cryptocurrencies have “longevity as an asset class.”

In a new report entitled “Cryptocurrency takes its first stress test: Digital gold, pyrite, or something in between?” JPMorgan’s strategists say bitcoin is looking “mostly positive,” Bloomberg reported Friday. The report, led by head of U.S. interest rate derivatives strategy Joshua Younger and cross-asset research analyst Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, shows that cryptocurrencies have “longevity as an asset class.”

The report examines bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and other financial assets as they plunged in March when the coronavirus pandemic exploded in the U.S., causing shutdowns that crippled the economy. While bitcoin crashed to under $4,000, it bounced back faster than most other assets and recouped most of its value by the end of April. Moreover, bitcoin’s valuations did not diverge much from intrinsic levels during the March panic. “Though the bubble collapsed as dramatically as it inflated,” the strategists wrote: “Bitcoin has rarely traded below the cost of production, including the very disorderly conditions that prevailed in March.”

And Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin says stock markets are now moving more like crypto markets

Finally, I’ll leave you with this interesting observation from Ethereum’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin:

Source: Twitter

Okay, that’s all for this week’s this week in crypto.

If you enjoyed this issue you can buy me a pot of tea by following this link.

Thanks for reading.

Harry

Crypto NewsBitLicenseCoordicideIOTAJPMorgan

Harry Hamburg

This is all, just like... my opinion, man.


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