CoinMetro’s CEO, Kevin Murcko brings you the most recent crypto market news during the weekly AMA every Friday.
Crypto Market News Highlights
Highest in 2 Years: 65% of Bitcoin Hash Power Is in China, Report Finds
Anybody that has ever read an article about crypto would know that the majority of hash power is in China. What this shows is that Bitcoin is vulnerable in terms of its hash power. Chinese government, as we’ve seen many times, can simply move from one day to the next and say “bye-bye, miners”. If they do that and a big chunk of that mining power went offline, what would happen? Are there other miners around the world that are able to handle the load?
VeChain Loses $6.6M in VET Tokens to Hacker in Attack on Buyback Wallet
This is social engineering. Kevin just had a call the other day with a company that does penetration testing as well as vulnerability testing. One of the things that they test is social engineering. Most of these “hacks” are social engineering hacks. They get the information through means of asking or fooling someone.
What needs to be said here is that almost every week there’s a hacking story. But there’s a hacking story in every other industry as well, we just don’t pay attention to them on this show. With that said, there are more and more companies in the crypto space now, and the number of hacks hasn’t increased. That means that the new companies coming in, are following the rules that they should be following.
Bitcoin App Bottle Pay Shuts Down Over Impending EU Money-Laundering Laws
These laws are not that hard to follow. If you got into the payments business, and you think you can do that without following basic AML/KYC and basic regulatory policy around payments, then you’re a fool, and this will happen to you.
They could just have changed their system, or have done it correctly from the beginning. But they didn’t. Which means that they should go out of business.
Former Kraken employee sues exchange for “unethical and illegal business tactics”
Employees aren’t necessarily saying the truth. Neither are the employers. It’s word against word and anyone can make a claim. At the end of the day, we will have to see what the judge decides.
Fidelity to Expand Institutional Crypto Business to Europe
Makes sense. They have expanded all their other businesses into Europe. Europe is still fertile ground. While the US still has a lot of decent sized businesses when it comes to custody, “institutional realm business in the crypto space” — Europe doesn’t. So it makes sense.
SEC looks to expand accredited investor classification
It’s not really what everybody is hoping for. They’re looking to expand it in a way such as if you are an employee of a fund and you have some relevant knowledge.
It’s going in the right direction. People complain so much about government entities that control other aspects of their life, but they don’t mind government entities for the most part. That’s because the vast majority doesn’t invest. Not because of the laws, but because they don’t have the education to invest and they leave their money in their bank accounts.
Kevin thinks we aren’t going to see any major reforms in any of these credit/investor classifications, until educators from primary school to secondary school start teaching people how to generate and create wealth, and taking any means to create a better financial future. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen anytime soon. It might be something Kevin will be dedicating some of his time to when he gets older.
Binance Invests Undisclosed Sum in Crypto Derivatives Platform FTX
Kevin already said this two years ago, that he couldn’t believe that Binance wasn’t doing any acquisitions. Now they’re starting to acknowledge the fact that they can buy things that do something better than they can, and better their service.
What they should be buying is a regulated crypto exchange so that they can reform their main Binance exchange so it doesn’t fall to the wayside when that time comes.
UK’s Oldest Crypto Exchange (Coinfloor) to Delist Ethereum and Focus Solely on Bitcoin — CoinDesk
Kevin actually met the CEO of Coinfloor in the UK. Great guy.
It’s surprising, and not surprising. Obviously this means most of their volume comes from Bitcoin. They feel that it makes sense to just focus there. Maybe they’ve tried to get volume on other pairs, and not been able to.
It’s surprising in the sense that you need to diversify income streams. Even if Bitcoin is the major asset today, basing your business around that asset which might not be the main one in the future. Unless you are the biggest player in the market.
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Tune in every Friday for “This Week in Crypto” with CoinMetro’s CEO Kevin Murcko on our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/coinmetro
