Responsible Development of Digital Assets
We will gladly wait to buy bitcoin at bottom. We don't want it to bottom yet, it is still too expensive and speculative. We want it dirt cheap so that plebs may own it. We want bitcoin to become legal tender around the planet so that central banks no longer control money supply. Let Latin America prove to the world that bitcoin does have a future. Since the arrogant first world looks down on us, let their fud continue. El Salvador and most other countries need as many bitcoin shorts as possible so that this bear market goes as low as it can. Everything is working out to perfection. Boomers remain in disbelief! Bukele has been by far one of the most innovative presidents in the planet. His speech is a bright development for an otherwise boring Miami conference. Bitcoin will become legal tender in El Salvador.
Businesses already quote prices in btc. They lower and increase them as they see fit. Being in Venezuelan hyperinflation we learned long ago how to do it as many times a day as necessary. It will also be a decade long process to have other countries follow example from El Salvador. No one is expecting immediate change. However this news may trigger an end to the two month btc downward correction. El Salvador is getting prepared to offer immediate permanent residence to crypto investors. Latin Dubai, Brunei or Singapore? Will Bukele succeed in ending fud? That would educate those insisting that first world speculation is more important than third world development.
Citizens of countries who start using bitcoin as legal tender will eventually be beneficiaries of those who eagerly dump. Most of remaining countries in Latin America will follow suit, after El Salvador and Paraguay. This is an extremely bullish scenario. El Salvador and Paraguay are countries with which Venezuela has little international trade even though we have similar cultures. Perhaps bitcoin continent will transform us in a confederacy as succesful as than European Union. Bitcoin will moon once we get a few additional latin american countries into the legal tender movement. Bitcoin will be accepted as full status forex currency by United Nations and International Monetary Fund. El Salvador and Paraguay bitcoin adoption as legal tender news are supportive, there has been no lower low on bitcoin since Bukele made the announcement. Venezuela is not in yet, but our time will also come.
Scams such as as gnox (and other recruiters for souls yearning riches) are of high magnitude and complexity. They must increase audiences fast to compensate for dellusioned followers anxious to get their money back. Presale victims are expected to dump upon launch. Luck only works in the short run. Eventually truth prevails and punishes those depending on constant luck to survive. Gnox promises easy money in exchange of absolute compliance. Chatter about selling their token is forbidden in their communication channels. Gnox sounds interestingly flashy. Its discourse reminds populist politicians who cleverly ask for votes during next election. They are fearful of betrayal, once you buy their token you are expected to hold forever. Selling it fast will lead you to better investments.
Secrecy of gnox team is suspicious to investors who wish to clearly investigate the motives behind apparently gracious sources of income. It is impossible to discover identity of owners. Tradable securities are supposed to supply relevant information for investors. Thousands of deceived early investors are anxiously waiting for the first available opportunity to dump gnox tokens, acquired during presales through questionable, deceiving marketing tactics. Fast unloading will encourage sudden depreciation once marketing ends. Most supply is already taken by presale holders, who are supposed to never sell. Rewards are supposed to arrive hourly in extra gnox tokens as result of sales tax. If holding mantra is succesful there would be no sale rewards. Staking seems more profitable.
Gnox plan is designed to condition profitability through extreme worship of its token. Sellers and fudders become pariahs to be exterminated from the unbreachable path. So blatantly positive advertising invites extra suspicion. Crash alert in no time! Solidproof audit specifies that ownership is not renounced, and provides no know your customer certification. Investors have no idea on who is in charge of this project and their motivation. Previous Soken audit states that Gnox remains under investigation. Growing crowds yearn for no government, but decentralized financing cannot be left at the mercy of scammers. Gnox case teaches us that there is a sound foundation for requiring tokens to be treated as securities, leading to extensive owner disclosure requirements.
Binance service of providing free transfers of stablecoins to another profile based on your international friend's email address has become the only use case of cryptocurrency. Everything else seems a scam. Margin trading wipes out shorts. Collateralized loans wipe out longs. Smart contracts contained in airdrops compromise wallet seed phrases, effectively depleting supposedly high yields into total loss of capital. Hard to find small caps inequivocally yell that cryptocurrencies are investment securities with probable risk of loss. Through hype advertising, world's people become addicted to gambling.
Why are we cluttered with so many blockchains? What is the use of transaction details? There is no willingness to use such details in enforcing punishments to hackers and fake news spammers. United States Federal Reserve remains the only sober institution in a drunken planet. I pray for Jerome Powell and Fed regional chairmen, so that they endure impopularity for fighting inflation through interest rate rises. Bear market rallies are unsustainable. They promote an illusion of growth that is fueled by scams. It is no coincidence that third quarter 2022 already looks ripe to pulverize previous records on fraud reporting.
World Trade Organization, International Criminal Court, World Bank, Interpol, International Monetary Fund are flagship institutions of globalization. They must commit to hastily adapt legislation procedures to combat theft by cryptocurrency secrecy criminals. Tokens must be classified as securities. They are clearly issued to raise capital through profit and loss schemes to investors. Ownership credentials from any project must consequentially be made available to the public. Secrecy of bitcoin founders should no longer remain classified. Cybercriminals use censorship of legally identified objectors. Unlawful narrative of confidentiality for crypto securities is being imposed. Investigations to recover funds lost or stolen shall no longer be obstructed.
Treasury has comprehensively defined the illicit financing risks associated with digital assets. However, lack of action has extended over many years. Since 2017, when most cryptocurrency issues were already known, little has been accomplished. United States dollar must remain the planet's main currency, requiring the Federal Reserve to further its interactions with all other central banks, including in countries politically at odds with the United States. Perhaps each of the twelve Federal Reserve regional banks could extend their territories as they concentrate in particular relationships with selected foreign central banks.
Future technological innovations in digital assets might present new illicit finance risks, rather than mitigate illicit finance risks. In 2021 and 2022 sheer number of blockchain hacks and frauds continues increasing to fresh all time highs. Distributed Ledger Technologies are designed to protect irreversibly delinquent transactions. Malicious actors will always protect their advantage to steal average users funds. Major international diplomatic and law enforcement coordination is required immediately. All sovereign countries face the common threat of anonymous lawlessness that benefits no reasonable citizens.
Non-fungible tokens represent most extensive illicit finance risks. Adequate price discovery for such assets seems nonexistent. It is unwise to dismantle existing mercantile registries or notary publics if the trend of hypertokenization continues. Medical records, wills and other documents supposed to be safeguarded in blockchains are prone to be irreversibly stolen or modified by smart contract counterparties, as it already happens with hard earned wealth. We might quickly discover identification of wallet addresses, but we fail miserably in matching them with actual human beings who make a delinquent living by hiding.
Anonimity, lack of physical office addresses, and irreversible transactions are the illicit finance risks related to decentralized finance (DeFi) and peer-to-peer payment technologies. It is significant that Binance centralized platform acknowledges this risk to whoever wishes to transfer tokens into its own Binance Smart Chain. It is not unreasonable to conclude that established crypto market makers depend on continued losses of unaware or unexperienced new traders to be recycled or money laundered into established platforms, to ensure a constant influx of unlawful liquidity for the sake of crypto space hyper growth.
Instead of creating additional steps, the United States government should concentrate in enforcing existing applicable steps to more effectively deter, detect, and disrupt the misuse of digital assets and digital asset service providers by criminals. SEC, CFTC, FDIC, OFAC, Department of Justice and other regulators should apply jurisprudence and legal precedents, dating back from previous centuries, to continue enforcing a rule of law that is increasingly dismissed by misreadings of libertarian principles. Human behavior remains unchanged despite technological advances. There is no reason to believe our species has evolved so much.
Specific areas related to AML/CFT and sanctions obligations with respect to digital assets require additional clarity. President Biden's willingness to work with regimes of Russia or Venezuela, in specific cases of climate change or release of political prisoners, illustrates areas of dialogue in otherwise unsolvable relationships. All countries to various degrees recognize the threat to self determination, if we continue allowing anonymous malicious actors to take over the global financial system. Country-specific, step by step procedures must be designed to cherry pick challenges where international cooperation becomes possible.
Existing regulatory obligations are fit for purpose as it relates to digital assets. Registration requirements set forth by Section 5 of Securities Act of 1933 are as straightforward as customarily permitted by language used almost a century ago. Similarly, the United States Constitution has stood the test of time. Ripple Labs spends billions of dollars attempting to discredit a law that has well served global financial systems over an extended period of time. It is also necessary that centralized and decentralized platforms, which are not exempt, separate their exchange and broker activities, according to Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
A regulatory change to help better mitigate illicit financing risks associated with digital assets, would be to explicitly categorize all tokens listed on Coinmarketcap as either commodities or securities. Ethereum, in particular, must be reassessed due to its recent switch from proof of work to proof of stake validation mechanism. If bitcoin is a commodity, miners must be subject to the same reporting requirements as suppliers of physical commodities.
Widespread October cryptocurrency fraud reflects values of delinquency and opaqueness in the entire industry. Use case for cryptocurrencies remains negligible. Population living in inflation ridden countries already transact in US dollars for most use cases. Central banks worldwide have the challenge of ensuring positive real interest rate for the long term, and restricting increase of money supply as stiffly as bitcoin does. They must succeed if we are to get rid of fraud and no use case wasteful investments. International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts 6.5% economic growth for Venezuela during 2023, featuring best performance in the Americas. Emigration patterns may lag while immigration and foreign investment get hastily encouraged into the media-battered country.
Alborada. Photography Mónica B. Valbuena L. 40 Grados Bajo El Sol