Consensus Network Weekly Crypto News 12/5/18
Cryptocurrency Market Capitalization: approx $124 Billion
Bitcoin Price (Coinbase): $3713
SEC Meets with VanEck SolidX/CBOE to discuss bitcoin ETF…Again
We have been talking about this bitcoin ETF for some time now that involves a couple of major players including the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE). A lot of people believed that given the CBOE involvement that this ETF would eventually find its way through the SEC. So representatives from all of the involved parties met again on November 28th.
As you may recall, the last meeting occurred October 9th at which time the attempt was made to convince the SEC that the market is mature enough to support the ETF. Of course that was before the market plummeted from news surrounding bitcoin cash and the war between Roger Ver and Faketoshi, Craig Wright. I’m not sure that was good for their case!
This most recent meeting was in attempts to present the case that bitcoin is a commodity like silver or gold which already have ETFs. Furthermore, the case was made that several qualities of bitcoin and the bitcoin market make it less susceptible market manipulation than other commodities.
The full presentation is on the SEC website. Suffice it to say that the case is compelling but I’m not sure the SEC is going to let it happen with all the money that has been lost in the cryptocurrency market this year.
My guess is that we will see Bakkt, ErisX and Fidelity bring in more money and make this a larger more liquid market before the SEC will go for an ETF. We will continue to follow this story carefully.
SEC Penalizes Floyd Mayweather Jr. and DJ Khaled for Illegal ICO Promotion:
Boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. and DJ Khaled have large Twitter followings—something which I do not. Both Celebs were also paid to promote ICO’s on their Twitter accounts and did not disclose payments.
Mayweather was paid at least $300K over the course of just a few months and DJ Khaled was paid $50K. Why anyone would take financial advice from Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled is beyond me personally.
The SEC has banned them from doing any further such promotions, ordered disgorgement of promotional funds received and tacked on interest and penalties for both celebrities to pay.
Of course these two guys were not the only ones doing this. There are bloggers and podcasters in the space that were doing the same that will almost certainly be under investigation by the SEC.
Frankly, we need this if the blockchain space is to succeed. We need to purge this world of as many charlatans as possible and focus on the technology. Things like this make the industry look bad and we need do a better job of self-regulating the industry if we are to be taken seriously.
One good outcome of the crypto blood bath is that all of these guys are suddenly silent and BS ICO’s are disappearing every day. We need to purge these elements to move forward.
I would like to point out that I seem to be the only one to have STARTED a podcast in the bear market. Hopefully that shows you my true conviction!
Bitcoin Declared Dead!…Again.
Several media outlets that have no clue what they are talking about have yet again declared bitcoin dead. This time, the focus has been on the idea that the price of bitcoin has dipped below a point at which miners will continue to secure the network. This has been characterized as the bitcoin “death spiral”.
The problem is, it’s just not true. Bitcoin adjusts its difficulty according to the hash rate—for every minor that turns off, mining becomes more profitable for the remaining miners.
Bitcoin Mining difficulty dropped by 15 percent Monday—which was the second largest drop in ASIC history. Decreases in difficulty make it cheaper to mine. The math isn’t quite as hard for the computers to solve.
Now also remember that some major minors are located in China with ridiculously inexpensive costs of electricity. Other minors are being subsidized by their governments or are using very inexpensive renewable energy.
We all seem to forget that bitcoin didn’t start out at $6000. It is software designed to adjust to demand. It will find its way.