Recently, the currency circle continued to send news that it would be 'killed.' After the domestic regulators completely banned the domestic exchanges and ICO (first-money issuance) transactions, they then directed their attention to those that were open to domestic investors. Virtual currency trading or ICO platforms and institutions.
A few days ago, domestic media reported that ICO was recently opened to domestic retailers in the form of 'export to domestic sales', and close to each other's gold rectification office also indicated that 'the arrest should be carried out as long as it is a financial fraud crime against domestic users. Regardless of whether it is inside or outside China, it is necessary to supervise and urge relevant departments to screen the IP address of the overseas exchange platform.
The First Financial Reporter confirmed from a person close to the regulatory authorities that China's supervisory authority guarded against fraudulent crimes targeting overseas ICOs and virtual currencies, not only a way of closing IP addresses, but also the state’s highest supervisory authority to adopt such means through other means. Measures.
In this strong regulatory context, is the virtual currency to cool down? The currency circle is precarious and the bubble is about to burst? A senior currency circle holder with thousands of bitcoin told reporters that people who entered the ring around 2012 or earlier Say, regardless of whether Bitcoin is up or down, they will all continue to hold, but the tightening of supervision will gradually let blind investors withdraw from this game.
The chaos is still there, domestic supervision continues to tighten
Although the central ministries and other seven ministries and commissions issued the “Announcement on Prevention of Financing Issuance Financing Risk” in September 2017, they completely banned ICO and other illegal financing, and subsequently closed all virtual currency exchanges in the country, but they included virtual currencies such as Bitcoin. The currency industry is still active through various 'transformations'.
According to the First Financial Reporter’s understanding, since the September 2017 issue of the document, all the major virtual currency trading platforms in the country have gone abroad. The large-scale digital currency trading platforms such as Huoyin, OKCoin, and Coin have evacuated the entire exchange business from China. And stop all renminbi transactions on digital currencies.
However, although these platforms have relocated their servers overseas, they still open their doors to domestic users. Users can continue to log on to trading websites, exchange RMB for bitcoins through off-exchange transactions, and exchange other types of digital currencies through currency exchange transactions. .
At the same time, in various forums and posts, there are no shortages of 'How to use currency trading virtual currency' strategies. There are detailed explanations on how to create an international account, how to recharge, how to find agents, how to conduct BTC transactions, and how to redeem.
The first financial reporter found that the OKEx trading platform continued to launch new ICO tokens. The latest currency name is WFee. This currency is a WiFi sharing ecosystem based on blockchain technology. It was launched on March 6th. The Coin Pro station also continued to be in the new middle school. There have been more than 20 ICO tokens in the innovation zone.
At the same time, a lot of ICO projects circling under the banner of the blockchain still continue.
At the end of February of this year, a token named Beautychain (beauty chain BEC) opened after the OKEx and Lbank went online and gained more than 4000%, which was nearly 4 US dollars. Since then, the price has dropped. The white chain of the US chain can be found , Beauty chain and Mito company's overseas applications BeautyPlus has a strategic partnership. However, Mito chairman Cai Wensheng subsequently rumored in the social network, saying that the US chain is a blockchain product opened by an independent third party, Mito The company has promotional cooperation with overseas companies. Mito does not involve other related businesses in the US chain.
However, a senior currency circle informs CBN that the US-linked currency itself does not have any value. The price increase achieved through the speculation on the exchange is actually a disguised form of misappropriation. All similar actions will be postponed by the regulators. of.
First Financial has previously reported that the public security system network supervision department is closely monitoring domestic and foreign trading websites involving bitcoin and other virtual currency transactions to prevent the occurrence of illegal cases such as money laundering, pyramid schemes, and fraud. From September 2017, the public security department network The supervisory department began to pay close attention to the development of the domestic trading platform. Although some platforms have been transferred overseas, they still monitor them synchronously.
A senior virtual currency industry insider told First Financial that the most important way of network supervision is to close the website entrance, but this method is easily broken through technical means. 'If the trading platform related bank accounts and payment accounts are regulated or frozen , it will be more direct some'.
As of now, in less than two months since 2018, Chinese regulators have conducted comprehensive attacks on all aspects of off-exchange transactions, offshore trading platforms, and mining in the entire industrial chain of virtual currency.
In mid-January, some media reported that many ministries and commissions, including the Central Bank, the Central Internet Information Office, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, will jointly strengthen the rectification of the virtual currency market, especially for over-the-counter trading platforms in the territory of the registered companies, large-scale 'point-to-point' in the territory. The market-making transactions, as well as registration in the territory but through its overseas website platform to provide virtual currency centralized trading services for domestic customers, will be gradually cleared up.
After that, the Interim Gold Improvement Office issued a notice to the provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) under its jurisdiction and requested all localities to comprehensively adopt measures such as electricity price, land, taxation, and environmental protection, and actively guide enterprises within the jurisdiction to orderly withdraw from the 'mining' business. In addition, the central bank The Department of Business Administration also issued a document earlier this year requesting various legal person payment agencies within the jurisdiction to prohibit the provision of services for virtual currency transactions and to take effective measures to prevent payment channels from being used for virtual currency transactions.
Countries around the world have started to govern ICO
In addition to China, the rest of the world has also joined the ranks of governance ICO.
According to overseas media reports, more than 80 U.S.-related companies in the United States have received subpoenas from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). TechCrunch (TC) founder Michael Arrington said in an interview with the media that the subpoena contents Including requiring companies to provide information such as the pre-sale and sales composition of the ICO.
The European Commission recently stated that it will evaluate the applicability of the EU's existing rules to digital currencies and ICOs, and will increase efforts to establish universal blockchain technology standards to promote the development of the EU's fintech market. At the same time, the European Commission will also establish a financial Laboratories to help regulators deal with fintech issues. In the past few months, the European Commission has stepped up the collection of information on the cryptocurrency industry.
Austria currently plans to regulate digital currencies and will use the existing trading rules for gold and derivatives as a template.According to European media reports, the main concern of the Austrian government is that digital currency may be used for money laundering.Meanwhile, the government also hopes that the traditional financial Product regulatory measures extend to digital assets.
Austrian Minister of Finance HartwigLoeger said in an interview: "The regulation of digital currencies is very important in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing." Loeger outlines some measures the government plans to implement, including requiring digital currency market participants to The parties to the transaction identify and disclose information about investors whose transaction value exceeds EUR 10,000 to financial regulators.
Loeger said the rule will also cover regulation in the ICO project area, where the government will apply existing rules on market manipulation, insider trading and preemptive transactions and will require organizers to submit 'figures' to the National Financial Markets Authority (FMA) Money prospectus'.
In the meantime, Thai regulators have accelerated the virtual currency and ICO regulatory process, and Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will review the ICO regulatory framework on March 8, according to Thai media reports, in which assets and service requirements, KYC Your clients), etc. In addition, information disclosure, transaction reports, system security, trading objectives, how ICO funds are used, etc., will also be included in the regulatory framework.
Earlier, Thai media reported that Thai listed companies and private companies are eager to ICO before the introduction of relevant regulatory policies, these companies are worried that regulators will increase the trouble for issuers and investors Recently, the Thai listed company JayMartPlc's son Company JVentures became the first public company in Thailand to launch an ICO, which sold 100 million digital tokens and raised some 660 million baht (about 21 million U.S. dollars).
Rapee Sucharitakul, secretary general of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand, said that the cryptocurrency regulatory panel will hold a meeting this month to discuss whether existing laws are sufficient to regulate cryptocurrencies. The panel is comprised of representatives from the Central Bank of Thailand, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Ministry of Finance and AML Office representatives.
Bitcoin heat quietly dropped
Under the background of continuous tightening of China and global supervision, the heat of virtual currency seems to have quietly dropped.
Search engine Google’s latest search data shows that if you set the peak value of the peak in December 2017 as 100%, as of March 4th, Google’s search for bitcoin has fallen to 16%, a record low since early October of last year. This result means that compared with the peak search volume in December last year, netizens’ search volume for Bitcoin is now reduced by more than 80%. In contrast to the previous Bitcoin search volume, bitcoin prices were around US$5,000. .
Bitcoin's daily trading volume, along with the volume of searches, is also declining.Trading data from several top bitcoin exchanges around the world show that compared to the December 2017 peak, the daily volume of bitcoin has been Dropped by half. With bitcoin prices dropping to new lows on February 6, the trading volume also dropped to the bottom.
Insiders believe that there are many reasons for the decline in trading volume, partly due to the global regulatory tightening, some investors lost the trading route, in addition, it is also associated with the price volatility.
It is noteworthy that Bitcoin prices continued to rebound from mid-February 2018 to the present, and as of March 7th, they have recovered to around US$11,000, and have basically stabilized above US$10,000 in the past two weeks. Meanwhile, other virtual currencies have Prices have remained stable in the past two weeks. Ethereum is stable at about 700 U.S. dollars, and the third largest digital currency, Utopia, is stable above 0.8 U.S. dollars.
However, the price increase did not drive the increase in trading volume. The transaction volume has not seen any improvement. According to Coinhills data, in the past 24 hours, the global Bitcoin transaction volume was about 1.45 million, which was approximately US$ 15.36 billion. This figure is insufficient. Half of last year's highest point in December.
Charles Morris, chief investment officer of Newscape Capital Group in London, pointed out that such trading volume may be bad news for the long-deposit bitcoin bulls. He stated that transactions and purchases in the Bitcoin network can be measured by indicators such as trading volume, which shows the direction of the price. .