In the U.S. Congress held hearings devoted to the cryptocurrency. Quite a positive tone was set by representatives of the Committee on agriculture of the United States, discussing the potential impact that digital assets can have on economic processes.
In the hearings, which were broadcast in real time, was attended by academics, engineers and entrepreneurs to develop the industry of cryptocurrency.
It should be noted the meeting of the Committee coincided with the arraignment of 12 Russian hackers in connection with their alleged involvement in the course of the US presidential election in 2016. As you know, bitcoin is mentioned in the indictment as the means, which were used to Finance the activities of the accused “GRU officers” due to the possibility of using it to hide the identity of the participants.
However, the members of the Committee were already aware that the public nature of the bitcoin network has allowed the investigators to establish how the flow of funds, and it was much easier than in the case of cash.
“If all the dumb criminals continued to use bitcoin would be great,” — said during the hearings the Chairman of Committee Michael Conway (Michael Conaway).
Thus the meeting turned into a discussion of one topic, on the contrary, the discussions were even more detailed than those conducted by the Commission on securities and exchange Commission (SEC).
So, co-founder and CEO Clovyr amber baldé (Amber Baldet), previously led the center for blockchain development JPMorgan Chase, made a strong case in favor of regulation of the innovation sphere requires great care. According to her, the technology of the blockchain in its current form — this is actually the first open mechanism, built on open source technology that is very similar to the Internet infrastructure. While the technology of distributed registry is in the early stages of its development, but has the potential to grow into a new fundamental technology is akin to the SMTP Protocol for mail transfer.
Baldé strongly recommends a very reasonable and restrained approach to regulation, believing that “the Committee could take a more proactive stance” in order to maintain the blockchain, which has become a global infrastructure like the US did in the case of the Internet.
On the other hand, the issues raised by some members of the Committee, saying that the General concern about the high volatility of bitcoin, and fraudulent ICO is stored. The chief innovation officer of the Commission on trade commodity futures (CFTC) Daniel Gorfain (Daniel Gorfine) indicated that space had a lot of “bad” players, and that over 80% of the ICO eventually went bankrupt.
At the same time Gorfain noted: his work is largely aimed at creating a “FINTECH-tutorial” which will help educate investors and regulators, helping them understand the technology, including to prevent fraud. From his point of view, lack of knowledge is an inexhaustible source for such attempts, as well as “still hazy” regulation.
Gary Gensler (Gary Gensler), lecturer, School of management MIT Sloan and former Chairman of the CFTC, urged to expedite the decision about a restrained regulation: this is required in order to support innovators.
Gensler previously suggested that Ethereum is an unregistered security, I am sure, strict or unclear regulations can facilitate the movement of innovations and economic benefits to offshore — then other countries will overtake the US in the nascent industry. Examples from the history of other sectors have already shown that as soon as innovators leave the country, it becomes much harder to get them back even by changing the approach.
The participants of the meeting touched on various other anxious moments. First, we are talking about centralization of capital: it is known that over 90% of all bitcoins circulating in the market, contains only a few wallets. Second, the members of the Committee pointed out that the largest miners of bitcoin are in China and Russia, together accounting for about 50% of the mining capacity. Rapidly expanding its business globally Chinese Bitmain.
Overall, the fact that in the framework of the Committee of private sector experts and academics were able to show regulators the complexity associated with the development of the blockchain, is an important outcome of the meeting. As noted by the Chairman of the Committee, Conway, summing up all above said, the hearing “very well clarified” participants “various issues” related to technology.
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