Autor Cointelegraph By Dominik Schiener

IOTA co-founder: Lummis-Gillibrand is a blessing for the crypto industry

There’s never a good time for a crypto winter, but it would be difficult to envision a worse time than right now.Even before 70% of Bitcoin’s (BTC) value evaporated seemingly overnight, things were not going great in the court of public opinion. Negative sentiment was everywhere; a Twitter account documenting crypto bros taking it on the chin racked up hundreds of thousands of followers. Now the biggest crypto exchanges in the world are laying off full-time employees by the thousands, and the self-proclaimed “Cryptoqueen” has landed a spot on the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for defrauding investors out of $4 billion. Oof. The prosecution rests.It’s easy to brush off crypto’s public-facing PR woes as being exactly that: an image problem. Looks aren’t everything. This is the domain of diamond hands, not useless hand-wringing. Leave the non-believers behind. We were never going to convince the hardcore detractors and incorrigible skeptics anyway. (The problem with this mindset, however reassuring its devil-may-care optimism, is that it always ends up advocating preaching to the choir as a viable strategy. It isn’t. It never has been.)A faceless hoard of hardcore detractors and incorrigible skeptics have proven useful straw men since crypto’s early days. But upon closer examination and in the wake of the crash, the skeptics eager to bring us to heel are real people with real power, and they were watching us closely before that line went down, down, down.Related: Sen. Lummis: My proposal with Sen. Gillibrand empowers the SEC to protect consumersThis is happening on both sides of the Atlantic. In Washington, skepticism over crypto is increasingly the norm. Last September, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler compared stablecoins to “poker chips” and emphasized the need for Congress to increase its regulatory powers over crypto. Co-sponsored by Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D) and Cynthia Lummis (R), an expansive regulatory bill called the Responsible Financial Innovation Act arrived on June 7, removed from the industry-shaking dip by days, not months. Another bipartisan proposal — led by Senators Debbie Stabenow (D) and John Boozman (R) — arrived in August.From downturns to crackdownsThis bill is no symbolic gesture. It enjoys bipartisan support, for one thing, in a government where bipartisan support of anything is just about unheard of in recent years. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which Gillibrand helps oversee, would regulate crypto directly if (and likely when) the bill passes, reclassifying digital assets as commodities such as wheat or oil in the process.Related: GameFi developers could be facing big fines and hard timeThe 69-page bill is so expansive that it may have to be broken up and passed incrementally. Lummis, it’s worth mentioning, isn’t anti-crypto. She actively invited crypto industry leaders to work with her on legislation, which bodes better for crypto on the whole than a push to simply enforce and expand existing SEC regulations.The industry should take her up on this invitation. The Lummis–Gillibrand legislation — which is, quite frankly, preferable to the narrower Stabenow–Boozman bill — would give exclusive jurisdiction to the CFTC for digital assets, except for when the digital asset falls under the scope of securities regulation. It’s worth noting that, thus far, the CFTC has played much nicer than the SEC, which has been woefully inadequate at providing regulatory guidance, attempting to steer the industry through enforcement that, at times, borders on purely punitive.The sooner we reach out, the better. Sensible regulation is not a bad thing for crypto, but hasty regulation could be. The fallout of this crash has the potential to create a sense of urgency among regulation-minded lawmakers, compelling them to respond and overcorrect with sweeping measures. From a regulatory perspective, the chill of this crypto winter and the failure of the market to protect investors in any way is proof that we can’t be left to our own devices. Active, open cooperation would circumvent this.Cause for cautious optimism?We already know what scorched earth legislation looks like, which is to say there’s precedent for an entire country just banning crypto mining wholesale. That’s unlikely to happen in the U.S. or the European Union, seeing as decentralized finance (DeFi) and traditional financial markets are by now very much entangled. In the most capitalist of terms, it wouldn’t be profitable for traditional investors and markets to do away with crypto. But crypto was never going to get out of this scot-free. The sense of urgency created by this year’s crash will likely stymie the potential for more measured and considered regulations individually tailored to crypto’s needs. Had the crash not happened, lawmakers would’ve likely been more open to flexible, specifically designed measures.That’s now in jeopardy. Calling crypto and DeFi a potential “risk to financial stability,” European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde is already pushing for a second, expanded version of the Markets in Crypto Assets framework that has just been formally passed. Whatever was overlooked and left unaddressed the first time, namely aspects of staking and lending, isn’t going to be missed a second time.Related: Get ready for the feds to start indicting NFT tradersBut DeFi has become something of a scapegoat. It took the brunt of the blame after this market crash, and some of that blame was misplaced. Prior to the crash, the centralized providers took excessive risks and were not transparent about how they were investing customer funds. Pure DeFi projects, where it was just a fully transparent smart contract on the blockchain, performed exactly as they were supposed to. As legislators on both sides of the pond eye it for regulation, now is the time to work with regulators to achieve balanced and sensible regulation and save DeFi’s skin in the process.We can’t count on things to always just work out in our favor. Fears that the European Parliament’s Transfer of Funds Regulation (TOFR) would take a sledgehammer-over-scalpel approach to unhosted wallets and stymie machine economy development ended up being partially unfounded, at least for the meantime. Although it effectively enshrined the view that crypto transfers are riskier than other transfers, the TOFR’s harshest measures were diluted enough to keep unhosted wallets afloat. In any case, the legislation targeting unhosted wallets is now being shifted over to the draft of the Anti-Money Laundering regulation, where a more pragmatic approach is possible.Related: Crypto developers should work with the SEC to find common groundThis is, in a way, good news. From a tech perspective, crypto and DeFi weren’t ready or able to oblige with the original version of the rules outlined in the TOFR. The adjustment bought us time — something that the crypto sphere won’t have if sweeping regulations come down hard and fast and without our input.Perhaps there’s no use crying over (frozen) spilled milk. But this crash has changed the regulation game. I’m not trying to be a harbinger of doom here, but we need to be extremely proactive about approaching and working with legislators from here on out. The regulation timeline has accelerated. Now our technological development (along with our ability to adapt and negotiate) needs to kick into high gear, too.Dominik Schiener is a co-founder and the chairman of the Iota Foundation, which oversees one of the largest cryptocurrency ecosystems in the world. The foundation’s mission is to support the research and development of new distributed ledger technologies, including the Iota Tangle. Dominik oversees partnerships and the overall realization of the project’s vision toward the machine economy.This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Čítaj viac

Crypto’s ongoing crisis is an opportunity for realignment

It’s not a great day to be in crypto. Perhaps you’ve seen an article (or 20) about this. Perhaps you’ve been on Twitter, where our detractors are cackling gleefully over every headline, each one more harbinger-of-doom-esque than the next. To be fair, things are going badly. Crashed, collapsed, erased, plunged, obliterated and imploded are the operative verbs in most coverage, and they’re not being used incorrectly or in an exaggerated manner. There’s no putting a positive spin on a week where $400 billion in value just evaporated. Even for the most furiously determined buy-the-dippers and diamond-handed believers who feed off detractors and never say die, it’s dire out there.I’m not interested in making a case for buying the dip or for dipping out forever and getting into, say, stockpiling gold bars in an underground bunker. But I do see this feral, angry, rabid bear market we find ourselves careening through as an opportunity for some much-needed course correction. I’ve argued before that the crypto space at large has lost the plot, forsaking the borderline revolutionary potential of decentralized finance for an inescapable horde of stupid-looking monkeys. I’m not the only person in crypto who feels this way, let alone the most prominent. Vitalik Buterin made similar points in his widely-read profile in the March 2022 issue of Time magazine.As crypto has soared in value and volume, Vitalik Buterin has watched the world he created evolve with a mixture of pride and dread, writes @andrewrchow.“Crypto itself has a lot of dystopian potential if implemented wrong,” @VitalikButerin tells TIME https://t.co/fsvL4Mx9uE— TIME (@TIME) March 21, 2022Comeuppances and consequencesTwitter is never a great sample audience, but given the sorry state of crypto’s public reputation, it’s not unfathomable or even unexpected that this crash is being met with derision and schadenfreude by people outside the space. From rampant scams to ugly nonfungible tokens (NFT) to carbon-spewing mining, we’ve given the outside world plenty of reason to not only be skeptical of crypto. Many people still think we’re a bunch of tasteless bros duking it out on an unregulated stock market imitation whose comeuppance has arrived. Even before this crash, some writers and publications openly speculated that a crypto bubble burst would push a group of mostly male, newly broken, and deeply disillusioned people toward fascism and away from democratic values and, by extension, society.Related: In defense of crypto: Why digital currencies deserve a better reputationWhether or not you agree with that point — and I certainly don’t — it speaks to the dire state of crypto’s public image. Something has gone horribly awry when journalists at reasonably well-read political publications, however biased, are making even remotely compelling arguments for a crypto-to-fascism pipeline.Perhaps I’m shouting into the void here, given that the absence of regulation is largely the point of crypto, and unregulated spaces will always and inevitably breed bad actors. But people, we’ve absolutely got to get it together.Holding ourselves to a higher standardLet’s do something interesting with crypto. Let’s use crypto to make people’s lives better and more enjoyable and easier. Let’s stop spending ungodly amounts of money on NFT projects that exist only to exist and, in most cases, eventually crash. It’s not even about civic responsibility or altruism. When did we become so unambitious? When did we become so self-involved, motivated only by profit, and interested only in solving insular problems? When did we become so incredibly boring? In crypto’s infancy, the mood was positively utopian. Now it’s anything but, even among the people who were once true believers. Are we truly so easily swayed?Related: NFTs: Empowering artists and charities to embrace the digital movementPost-crash crypto ought to be better and smarter and more creative. We should be investing in projects and coins that enable a regenerative economy, support our much-needed natural ecosystems, make our cities smarter and more resilient, foster green energy, streamline supply chains, and fit into regular people’s investment portfolios. We should be thinking bigger. I know suggesting such a thing is a fool’s mission, but we should maybe consider cooling it with the yield chasing and the dreams of rags to riches without the work. We should figure out ways to separate crypto more meaningfully from the whims of the stock market, which is a large part of how we ended up in this catastrophe of a crash. Aren’t we supposed to remove the middlemen who have extracted so much value from the little guy? We’re not here to build a new Wall Street designed to make rich insiders richer.The crash isn’t anyone’s fault, so to speak. But our reputation and the people delighting in what they see as the potential demise of decentralized finance? We did that to ourselves. When we come out the other side, let’s move forward with actual intention. It’s the only way we get to mass adoption. And it’s the only way we’ll survive.This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.Dominik Schiener is a co-founder of the Iota Foundation, a nonprofit foundation based in Berlin. He oversees partnerships and the overall realization of the project’s vision. Iota is a distributed ledger technology for the Internet of Things and is a cryptocurrency. Additionally, he won the largest blockchain hackathon in Shanghai. For the past two years, he has been focused on enabling the machine economy through Iota.

Čítaj viac

Love it or hate it, crypto’s vibe shift is now imminent

Last month, cultural critic Alison P. Davis published an article in The Cut titled “A Vibe Shift is Coming. Will Any of Us Survive It?” The “vibe shift” Davis was referring to had nothing to do with crypto. She was referring to a sea change in pop culture and social trends, particularly in view of GenZ’s ongoing ascendance into trendsetting and cultural relevance. Nevertheless, her positioning caught my eye because she aptly put her finger on something crucial that I’ve also been feeling, particularly as it relates to crypto. The paradigm shift toward the next cultural moment — whatever it is — is perceptible, even if it’s not palpable. We can’t quite make it out, but we know it’s in the room. The concrete conditions haven’t shifted yet, but the vibe most certainly has.In the days following its publication, “vibe shift” captured Twitter’s attention and, in many cases, its derision. However silly the term, it captures something real and similar happening in the crypto space. Ridiculous as it may initially sound, there’s a vibe shift happening in crypto.I like the term “vibe shift” because it’s about exactly that: a feeling, a hunch, a mood, a tone, a vibe. Across its brief history, crypto’s vibe shifts have followed changes in the technology itself. Crypto’s initial wild west, anything-goes optimism stemmed from Bitcoin’s (BTC) transition from a peer-to-peer (P2P) payment solution to a store of value, then grew even more manic with the introduction of Ethereum, which demonstrated the potential of smart contracts. This half-manic optimism grew more serious and businesslike as decentralized finance (DeFi) expanded on the back of legitimate level-two networks. The development of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) brought artists and musicians into the fold, not the other way round.Related: In defense of crypto: Why digital currencies deserve a better reputationThis isn’t a good or a bad thing, it’s just a fact. The technology determines the discourse in DeFi and crypto, meaning that it also dictates the culture. That “this is no longer the case” is an argument you could only make after the actual tech reached a certain level of sophistication and public legitimacy — which is what’s happened with crypto and DeFi. A crypto “vibe shift” is a necessarily new concept, and it’s happening in a particularly interesting way.How we talk about crypto is changing, in other words, but not in response to the tech itself. People are speaking as if they have more skin in the game and not just because they’ve sunk their own capital into investments. People are thinking bigger about crypto’s role within the wider world, and not just in self-serving terms related to profiting off mainstream adoption.From profit to politicsDare I say we’ve gone political? I first noticed it with the Canadian truckers’ protest against vaccine mandates. This issue lit up the crypto space and was not quite over agreement or disagreement with the actual convoy’s goals. Facing a government freeze of traditional assets and being locked out of standard fundraising platforms like GoFundMe,the truckers turned to Bitcoin and raised $900,000 in a matter of days. Subsequent attempts by the Canadian government to lock crypto assets associated with the convoy were only partially successful. After an Ontario Superior Court judge issued an injunction freezing millions of dollars in crypto to the convoy, the crypto community responded with a mix of protestation and bemusement. Multisignature wallet Nunchuck had to respond publicly that, politics aside, they couldn’t provide the subpoenaed information even if they wanted to: “We are a software provider, not a custodial financial intermediary,” and one with no way of seizing its users’ assets at that.Discomfort with the political positions of the truckers aside, the crackdown nevertheless raised some shackles among our space. The idea (turned reality) that a federal government could seize crypto assets with a court order and on grounds related at least in part to ideology runs against everything this community prides itself on. The Russian invasion of Ukraine only underscored this feeling.Related: Bitcoin at the barricades: Ottawa, Ukraine and beyondThe cryptonomics of warA few interesting things happened in the initial days of the Russian invasion. The Ukrainian government requested donations in Bitcoin early (inevitably leading to scammers trying to clone the account for their own benefit), then called for crypto exchanges to freeze Russian accounts. Turning crypto into a safe financial haven and reliable store of value for a country at war was a game-changer, the effects of which we’ll feel for years. Many of these exchanges refused, claiming it would unjustifiably punish ordinary Russian citizens for the actions of their leaders. Some of the biggest names in the space seemed to come down on the side of neutrality, but not without qualification. Vitalik Buterin tweeted notably vaguely about crypto’s neutrality. Reminder: Ethereum is neutral, but I am not.— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) February 24, 2022Beyond that, a land war in Europe has predictably made many of us lose our taste for the latest quirky NFT drop, at least for now — there’s more serious stuff to talk about. And, crypto is actually talking about it. That is the vibe shift, and it’s not happening in response to the technology. It’s happening in response to the real world, and it’s changing the contours of the crypto one. It’s prompting a moral reckoning that cuts to the bone of what crypto is supposed to do and who it’s supposed to be for. It’s about the price of neutrality and what exactly neutrality means.Related: Every Bitcoin helps: Crypto-fueled relief aid for UkraineIf crypto has penetrated the real world, the real world is now penetrating crypto. The myopic and divorced-from-reality perspective our detractors accuse us of is wearing off. This vibe shift is making it so difficult to predict what comes next, particularly now that we’re suddenly wrapped up in massive geopolitical stakes. The conversation has changed because the rules of engagement have changed. Crypto is all fun and games and apes until someone starts a war. Or, for that matter, a convoy.The end of history or the future or crypto?I remain confident in the future of crypto and DeFi, but it’s going to be a complicated future. The Canadian trucker convoy and the war in Ukraine have become unexpected reckonings with no easy answers and, in many cases, some very unsavory ones. Like most everyone heavily involved in this space, I still believe a huge element of crypto’s hard and soft power is related to its bankless decentralized status removed from the traditional mechanisms of global finance. But, these things are never so simple.The point of a vibe shift is that what comes next is still opaque. We’re just now waking up to the power of crypto and the enormous implications of a legitimate, censorship-resistant financial infrastructure. What that means for the future and where we go from here is uncertain, and we have more on the line than the cultural denizens of New York City to which the term was originally applied. Self-sovereign money that exists outside of traditional finance’s control is untested in the contexts of geopolitical conflict and culture wars. Whatever happens next is going to change everything.This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.Dominik Schiener is a co-founder of the Iota Foundation, a nonprofit foundation based in Berlin. He oversees partnerships and the overall realization of the project’s vision. Iota is a distributed ledger technology for the Internet of Things and is a cryptocurrency. Additionally, he won the largest blockchain hackathon in Shanghai. For the past two years, he has been focused on enabling the machine economy through Iota.

Čítaj viac

Crypto mining won’t survive another round of environmental legislation

It was only a matter of time before China slapped a ban on Bitcoin (BTC) mining, trading and crypto services. To do anything with Bitcoin anywhere in the People’s Republic, one needs a special exemption. The Chinese government’s given reason for the Bitcoin crackdown is to reduce its well-documented climate impact. Regardless of the amount of truth in this explanation, one thing is clear: China’s righteous anger toward electricity-guzzling and carbon-spewing mined cryptocurrencies in the service of Earth’s climate is only the first shot in an impending global showdown over Bitcoin and other crypto projects that rely on proof-of-work (PoW), the complicated crypto security mechanism we subsume under “mining.” This does not seem like a battle crypto can or will win.For many cryptocurrency enthusiasts who are holding Bitcoin, this is a difficult realization to face. Luckily, there is a helpful parallel, and it even has the same name: coal mining. Coal is on its last legs because there are cleaner, cheaper, more efficient and more technologically advanced alternatives. Related: Carbon-neutral Bitcoin? New approach aims to help investors offset BTC carbon emissionsAdmittedly, coal isn’t going down without a fight, backed by monied corporate lobbies and powerful politicians often amenable to generous campaign donations. Even so, if your financial adviser told you he had a really good feeling about investing in coal, you would probably get a new financial adviser. For similar reasons, it might be time to accept the fact that mining, from coal to crypto, might soon be a relic of the past.Short-term effects of China’s Bitcoin banA combination of inertia and hesitation to quit mining have temporarily cushioned the full impact of China’s war on Bitcoin. After the initial shock, the United States sprung at the opportunity created by the Chinese ban to become the world’s new mining hub. In Asia, Kazakhstan and Malaysia are ramping up mining operations, as are Germany and Ireland in Europe and Iran in the Middle East, according to recent stats. The effort to keep crypto mining chugging along is making for some very strange geopolitical bedfellows.Such a colorful and diverse “Bitcoin mining coalition” might give some investors solace, but in truth, it will not stand the test of time. The U.S. cannot match China’s low energy prices, and it cannot hold on to the mining champion title for long. Germany and Ireland are in a similar boat. Iran is currently battling mass protests due to a severe water shortage, so boasting a stake in the world’s least sustainable cryptocurrency is politically undesirable and socially untenable, even for a theocracy. Malaysia is similarly exposed to extreme weather and rising sea levels that would not allow it to sustain its cryptocurrency mining effort in the medium to long term. Taken together, these developments severely limit mined cryptocurrency’s future prospects.Commitments to climate action push mining to the fringeIt certainly does not help the case for Bitcoin miners that a majority of the world’s states and virtually all-powerful industrial nations have entered into the Paris Climate Agreement. This comes with a firm commitment to limit carbon emissions and to keep the planet from further overheating. Mining Bitcoin is antithetical to this promise. Apart from the Paris Agreement, the European Union is pursuing its own climate change action plan, the European Green Deal. These large-scale multinational agreements are pushing energy-intensive projects such as Bitcoin mining to the fringe.Related: To the roots of mining: Bitcoin going green faster than everAs the tide turns in favor of carbon neutrality, the task of mining cryptocurrency is left to a handful of states that either do not take their climate goals seriously or simply do not forge long-term plans. It is no coincidence that many of the countries making a last-ditch effort to mine Bitcoin at the moment are authoritarian states facing mounting international pressure alongside growing internal strife and discontent. Few, if any, serious investors can stake their crypto portfolio on the political stability of a dictatorship or an autocracy running out of water and violently suppressing public dissent. It’s bad optics, bad for the climate and bad for business.A cryptocurrency that’s been pushed to the political and geographical fringe can hardly claim to be truly decentralized and democratic. Even if we put the climate problem aside, how are we to take cryptocurrency mined in tyranny as a token and tool of economic liberation? From the point of view of finance, climate and appearances, the sun is setting on Bitcoin and other mined cryptocurrencies. It’s only a matter of time.The power of inertia and the pain of letting goSo, what is keeping the mining train going? First and foremost, we should not underestimate the power of inertia and ingrained habits. Bitcoin was revolutionary when it came out in 2008. It paved the way to a new digital economy. Proof-of-work was a revelation in terms of decentralization and security, but its lack of efficiency presented us with a ticking time bomb. This bomb is going off now.Letting go of mining will be painful and its immediate replacement isn’t obvious. Powerful actors across the globe have amassed technological and energy resources to continue mining cryptocurrency for the foreseeable future, and they can pull enough political and economic levers to maintain the status quo a little while longer. When the institutional crackdown eventually comes, some mining will go underground and slip into the realm of organized crime for as long as it remains profitable. Related: Crypto mining needs to be redefined before simply casting it awayHowever, without legal on- and off-ramps for free exchange and mass adoption, the respective cryptocurrencies will recede to the shadows and sidelines with their valuations permanently devastated. Eventually, the market for mined projects and law enforcement will make mining obsolete. The question to investors and crypto enthusiasts is: Why wait for that to happen?Abolishing mining can jumpstart the crypto economy of the futureIf we invest the resources that have been set aside for Bitcoin mining into more advanced and greener crypto projects, we can achieve considerably more for the budding digital economy. We can keep piling coal into the old steam locomotive or we can switch to a bullet train and invest the resources into making it go longer and faster. Some will point to renewables and how Bitcoin can reduce its carbon footprint by using more green energy.Currently, less than one-third of global electric power is sourced from renewables. If this share went fully toward cryptocurrency mining, perhaps it could lend it a semblance of sustainability, but it would be little more than a fig leaf. We would do much better to direct renewable energy toward truly sustainable and sensible uses. As far as crypto is concerned, there are numerous promising and mathematically rigorous solutions with the potential to grant a network PoW-levels of security.Mining is on its way out, and we are making ourselves vulnerable by prolonging its inevitable demise. Switching to lighter, more sustainable and scalable solutions will open the crypto space to a much wider audience and fulfill its promise of true decentralization and democratization. The sooner we accept this fact and make the switch, the better for everyone within and without the crypto space.This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.Dominik Schiener is a co-founder of the Iota Foundation, a nonprofit foundation based in Berlin. He oversees partnerships and the overall realization of the project’s vision. Iota is a distributed ledger technology for the Internet of Things and is a cryptocurrency. Additionally, he won the largest blockchain hackathon in Shanghai. For the past two years, he has been focused on enabling the machine economy through Iota.

Čítaj viac

Získaj BONUS 8 € v Bitcoinoch

nakup bitcoin z karty

Registrácia Binance

Burza Binance

Aktuálne kurzy