In the wake of China’s ICO ban, what befalls the entire world of cryptocurrencies?
The greatest event in the cryptocurrency world recently was the declaration of the Chinese authorities to power down the exchanges where cryptocurrencies are traded. As a result, BTCChina, among the largest bitcoin exchanges in China, said so it would be ceasing trading activities by the conclusion of September. This news catalysed a sharp sell-off that left bitcoin (and other currencies such as for instance Etherium) plummeting approximately 30% below the record highs that 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 just a fraud… worse than tulip bulbs (in mention of the the Dutch ‘tulip mania’ of the 17th century, recognised because the world’s first speculative bubble)… that may blow up” ;.He would go to the extent of saying he would fire employees have been stupid enough to trade in bitcoin.
Speculation aside, what is actually going on? Since China’s ICO ban, other world-leading economies are taking a fresh explore the way the cryptocurrency world should/ may be regulated in their regions. Rather than banning ICOs, other countries still recognise the technological great things about crypto-technology, and are considering controlling industry 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 do not allow them to be classified under the policies of traditional investment assets.
Some of those countries include Japan, Singapore and the US. These economies seek to determine accounting standards for cryptocurrencies, mainly to be able to handle money laundering and fraud, which were rendered more elusive because of the crypto-technology. CashTab Ecash Yet, most regulators do recognise that there seems to be no real benefit to totally banning cryptocurrencies because of the economic flows they carry along. Also, probably because it’s practically impossible to power down the crypto-world for provided that the internet exists. Regulators can just only focus on areas where they may have the ability to exercise some control, which seems to be where cryptocurrencies meet fiat currencies (i.e. the cryptocurrency exchanges).
While cryptocurrencies seem to come 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 been driven from the mainland to the city. Aurelian Menant, CEO of Gatecoin, stated that the organization received “a high number of inquiries from blockchain project founders situated in the mainland” and that there’s 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 will only fuel their GPU sales, because the ban will likely raise the demand for cryptocurrency-related GPUs. With the ban, the only method to acquire cryptocurrencies mined with GPUs is to mine them with computing power. As a result, individuals looking to acquire cryptocurrencies in China are in possession of to acquire more computing power, rather than 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.