In the wake of China’s ICO ban, what befalls the planet of cryptocurrencies?
The biggest event in the cryptocurrency world recently was the declaration of the Chinese authorities to turn off the exchanges which cryptocurrencies are traded. As a result, BTCChina, one of many largest bitcoin exchanges in China, said so it could be ceasing trading activities by the end of September. This news catalysed a sharp sell-off that left bitcoin (and other currencies such as Etherium) plummeting approximately 30% below the record highs which were reached earlier this month.
So, the cryptocurrency rollercoaster continues. With bitcoin having increases that surpass quadrupled values from December 2016 to September 2017, some analysts predict so it can cryptocurrencies can get over the recent falls. Josh Mahoney, a market analyst at IG comments that cryptocurrencies’ “past experience tells us that [they] will likely brush these latest challenges aside” ;.
However, these sentiments don’t come without opposition. Mr Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, remarked that bitcoin “isn’t planning to work” and so it “is a fraud… worse than tulip bulbs (in reference to the Dutch ‘tulip mania’ of the 17th century, recognised while the world’s first speculative bubble)… that’ll blow up” ;.He visits the extent of saying that he would fire employees who were stupid enough to trade in bitcoin.
Speculation aside, what’s actually going on? Since China’s ICO ban, other world-leading economies are having a fresh explore the way the cryptocurrency world should/ can be regulated inside their regions. As opposed to banning ICOs, other countries still recognise the technological great things about crypto-technology, and are looking into controlling the market without completely stifling the growth of the currencies. The big problem for these economies is to work out how to achieve this, as the choice nature of the cryptocurrencies don’t allow them to be classified under the policies of traditional investment assets.
Some of these countries include Japan, Singapore and the US. These economies seek to establish accounting standards for cryptocurrencies, mainly in order to handle money laundering and fraud, that have been rendered more elusive because of the crypto-technology. CashTab XEC Yet, most regulators do recognise that there is apparently no real benefit to completely banning cryptocurrencies because of the economic flows that they carry along. Also, probably because it is practically impossible to turn off the crypto-world for so long as the web exists. Regulators can only just give attention to areas where they could manage to exercise some control, which is apparently where cryptocurrencies meet fiat currencies (i.e. the cryptocurrency exchanges).
While cryptocurrencies seem ahead under more scrutiny as time progresses, such events do benefit some countries like Hong Kong. Since the Chinese ICO ban, many founders of cryptocurrency projects have now been driven from the mainland to the city. Aurelian Menant, CEO of Gatecoin, said that the organization received “a lot of inquiries from blockchain project founders located in the mainland” and that there has been an observable surge in how many Chinese clients registering on the platform.
Looking slightly further, companies like Nvidia have expressed positivity from the event. They claim that this ICO ban is only going to fuel their GPU sales, while the ban will likely raise the demand for cryptocurrency-related GPUs. With the ban, the only method to obtain cryptocurrencies mined with GPUs is to mine them with computing power. As such, individuals looking to obtain cryptocurrencies in China are in possession of to obtain more computing power, in place of making straight purchases via exchanges. Basically, Nvidia’s sentiments is that this isn’t a downhill spiral for cryptocurrencies; actually, other industries will get a boost as well.