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The big story of the day, of course, is the sell-off of literally all the major cryptocurrencies as measured by market cap. While price of Bitcoin has recovered and climbed above the $9,000 mark as of 5:30 PM EST, it fell as far as $8,812.
Source: Coinranking
The news from yesterday about Facebook banning all cryptocurrency ads and concerns about Tether continued to affect the market, but what added fuel to downward movement was India’s finance minister Arun Jaitley’s comment about cryptocurrency during his budget speech.
“The government does not recognize cryptocurrency as legal tender or coin and will take all measures to eliminate the use of these crypto-assets in financing illegitimate activities or as part of the payments system.”
Many mainstream press and social media sources took this as his saying that India will be banning cryptocurrency and the market reacted. Afterwards, those in the cryptocurrency industry responded, saying that the media sources and market overreacted and there actually is no change in his stance - it’s business as usual. They highlight the fact that he says India will “eliminate the use of these crypto-assets in financing illegitimate activities”. It will soon be clear whether he meant India will crack down on “illegitimate activities” or cryptocurrencies in general. What is clear, however, is that regardless of how they feel about cryptocurrency, the Indian government will continue exploring blockchain’s potential for the future digital economy.
In other news, Sberbank's Head of Global Markets, Andrey Shemetov told the press that the bank will legally make available currency trading outside of Russia, through its Zurich-based branch.
Source: SberBank
Also coming out is news of insurance companies, including XL Catlin, Chubb, and Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance, providing insurance products against theft for companies that carry currency such as Bitcoin and Ether. While there are only a few such insurance companies, there are such several others that are apparently looking into it. This is certainly a step in the right direction for the industry’s acceptance into the mainstream.
Finally, there was a bit of interesting news out in Nevada, that a blockchain company going by the entity name Blockchains LLC bought 67,125 acres in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, which includes Tesla’s Gigafactory and Google as tenants. The two tech giants combined own 4,000 acres, just a fraction of the land that was just purchased by Blockchains LLC. The purpose of the purchase and details of the company are a bit unclear.
Source: Teslarati
