- New draft law on the protection of cryptos against over-regulation!
- Mining of Bitcoin Cash is becoming increasingly attractive!
- Gold exchanges prepare for entry into Blockchain!
The US Congress is planning to make crypto currencies more secure.
The US Congress is currently working on a draft legislation designed to acknowledge selected crypto currencies. At the same time, they are to be protected against excessive influence by the government. According to the American political magazine The Daily Caller, three Republican members of the Congress are preparing a paper that provides the protection of digital currencies to meet a number of legal conditions.
These minimum principles are intended to discourage users from misusing the currencies for illegal purposes, such as the acquisition of drugs or the support of terrorist activities. The aim of the initiative is to remove crypto currencies from the right-wing area and to give them the painting of a full-fledged official currency.
One of the congress members, who remained anonymous at his own request, said:
This move would put currencies like Bitcoin in a much stronger competition with the US Dollar than is currently the case. Accordingly, the legislative initiative seems to be cautious, the driving forces of which are not to be named by name because of the explosive nature of the topic.
Resistance to the plans is expected primarily by the American Federal Reserve Reserve as well as from the US Treasury Department. There, the additional competitor of the US Dollar is seen as a possible weakening for the American economy, which owes part of its strength to the dominance of the dollar as a global reserve currency. Libertarian Conservatives, on the other hand, are expected to support the proposal.
Compared to conventional currencies, the use of crypto currencies for the handling of illegal transactions prevents the full acceptance of the digital alternative in politics as well as in the general public. The implementation of the draft law and the ensuing fixing of certain standards and collateral would be an important step towards the decriminalization of the new technologies.
The enormous price rises of Bitcoin Cash over the past few days make the mining of the crypto currency in relation to Bitcoin more attractive.
With a price of currently 638 USD and a much lower mining-difficulty than with Bitcoin, many miners increasingly question whether they should not also provide mining capacities for Bitcoin Cash.
Since Sunday the Bitcoin-Cash-Difficulty has been reduced to 7% of the bitcoin-Difficulty so that blocks are now found in under 10 minutes. Depending on the course, Bitcoin Cash achieves twice as high mining profitability as Bitcoin.
This also seems to have been the reason for the mining company BTC.com, to also mine bitcoin cash since yesterday . Today the mining giant BTC.TOP is also to jump on the train. This is a strong signal to the community, because BTC.TOP takes about 11% of the Bitcoin network.
Also the charges per block are significantly higher with Bitcoin-Blockchain (approximately 6000 USD) than with the Bitcoin Cash-Blockchain (about 50 USD). However, Bitcoin mining is much more rapid in handling the required acknowledgments in order to receive the block reward, which is about twice as high as Bitcoin Cash at Bitcoin. Also the higher liquidity and price stability are to be regarded as arguments which speak for Bitcoin mining.
The shift in the mining capacity continues to fuel competition between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. If the economic conditions were to speak more and more for a mining of Bitcoin Cash, the Bitcoin would put a lot of pressure.
Several large players build blockchain-based platforms for gold trading.
The blockchain technology, on which the crypto currencies such as Bitcoin are based, should now also make the gold market more efficient. In the coming months, the world's largest exchange operator CME Group, the IEX Group start-up TradeWind Markets and the Fintech company Paxos will launch the corresponding products on the market.
Every day, physical gold worth around 27 billion US Dollars is traded. However, settlement can take place over days, which is a risk for buyers and sellers. Now the blockchain technology not only promises faster processing, but also more transparency and more security.
A blockchain is a new form of a decentralized register. At the same time, the data are simultaneously stored on several servers and signed cryptographically to protect the blockchain against tampering. This allows transactions to be automated more quickly and cost effectively.
With the blockchain technology, therefore, seven of Europe's largest banks, in cooperation with IBM, want to create a platform for trade finance for small and medium-sized enterprises in Europe. In addition, the blockchain promises to solve the problems of container shipments. The gold trade is also to make the blockchain more efficient.
"Digital gold would remove market shares from other gold investments, from futures contracts, from physical gold, from gold ETFs," said Ebele Kemery of JPMorgan Asset Management. The use of Bitcoin technology in gold trading would create an additional investment for investors.
The stock exchange operator CME Group and the British Royal Mint last year developed a gold product called Royal Mint Gold (RMG). The RMG trading platform is currently being tested with large financial institutions. It will be available to customers from the end of this year.
In constructing this trading platform, CME is cooperating with the block-based security company BitGo to create "a secure, cost-effective and cryptographically secure method" for buying, holding and trading precious metals.
According to the CME Group, the product is aimed at both institutional investors and end-users. It will be covered with physical gold worth up to a billion dollars that is stored at the British Royal Mint.
TradeWind Markets, the money management company Sprott Inc., also uses the blockchain technology for an electronic platform to bring together buyers and sellers of gold. The physical gold for this is in deposits approved by the London Bullion Market Association.
TradeWind also provides a decentralized registry to ensure trade processing, account management, and book-keeping. The company expects the launch of its new product at the end of this year or early next year.
The Fintech company Paxos is also well advanced with its blockchain product. Bankchain Precious Metals is a settlement service that allows the immediate transfer of payments and ownership of precious metals. The bars are stored in various safes in London, says Paxos CEO Charles Cascarilla.
In a pilot test with Euroclear this year, Bankchain Precious Metals has handled more than 100,000 transactions, according to a April announcement. Participants such as Citigroup, Societe Generale, Barrick Gold and INTL FCStone took part in the pilottest.
In a further test, a dollar action was taken by the Federal Reserve and the gold held in London vaults. This has shown that the system is ready to carry out immediate settlements, says Cascarilla. As planned, Bankchain will start this year even if Paxos and Euroclear have ended their partnership.
Adrian Ash, researcher at BullionVault, is less optimistic. Blockchain technology will not solve any of the problems associated with physical gold delivery, he says. His company operates an online platform for precious metal trading. The precious metal of the customers worth about two billion dollars is stored in safes in Zurich, London, New York and Singapore.
"People do not trust the government, so why would they store the gold in a vault of the government?" Says Adrian Ash. "Our customers do not want it to be in the vault of a private bank, because they can go bankrupt. When we buy it from a bank, we give it to special facilities. You need a truck to move it. Blockchain does not solve the truck problem. "
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