If you’ve been following the emergence of Cryptocurrencies of the last couple years you may have noticed that it’s been a wild ride. They crept into existence barely noticed, saw a slight uptick in popularity and absolutely exploded into relevancy before dropping off a bit in early 2018.
Many people’s question seems to be ”where does it go from here?”
The easy answer is “no one knows for sure.” The real answer is “where the people allow their governing bodies to take it.”
If you’ve read our previous article you’ll know the beauty of blockchain tech is that it doesn’t rely on a centralized power. This, for better or worse, puts power entirely in the hands of those making the transactions.
Silk road was a perfect example of people using this freedom for nefarious purposes. Rampant money laundering in multiple countries is another, but those were largely swept under the rug and ignored by the general public.
It wasn’t until the rally at the end of 2017 that people and their governments began to take notice. Cryptocurrencies stopped being a fringe commodity and became a real threat to the financial sector.
Businesses began to accept them as payment, tech moguls like Elon Musk began to speak about them and finally major financial institutions to include Wall Street offered to trade in them. Legislators could no longer assume it would fade away. They had to take action and here we are.
Cryptocurrency legislation in 2018
There’s been a major dip in the value of crypto in 2018. There are multiple contributing factors but some major factors are –
China has banned all ICOS and cryptocurrency trading.
South Korea has done the same to include anonymous trading.
India has ruled out cryptocurrency as legal tender.
Japan has introduced licensing legislation for cryptocurrency transactions.
The above are all due to not only laundering but multiple heists that have costs people hundreds of millions of dollars. The general thought is that left unchecked the system (and people) can and will be taken advantage of. China has referred to cyrpto as a “disruption to financial order” and others seem to agree.
China alone opting out has caused massive damage and their mining and purchasing was a major asset. The other major players in Asia opting out have drained significant value and the west is still trying to decide how to legislate going forward.
The United Kingdom and European Union are currently planning a cryptocurrency crackdown with the US to follow. America’s Securities and Exchange Commission is coming after ICOS that may have been involved in fraud.
One of the major hangups in western legislation is how to define cryptocurrency. This sounds trivial, but its classification decides a lot about how they can approach it, which governing body has the authority and how much of it they can control. The commodity (as it still stands) being so new doesn’t help. So, for now, lawmakers, financial experts and bureaucrats are scratching their heads trying to make heads or tails of it.
Unfortunately, for now, we’ll have to wait and see.
Jonathon Spire
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