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Cryptocurrency has survived for the longest time without being controlled by the authorities, but now there are proposed laws and regulations about it. Hence, the meaning of this for the crypto industry is currently unclear.
Back when crypto was just starting, it was considered the “wild west” of the financial industry – some kind of lawless system inhabited by suspicious individuals where each person was forced to take care of himself or herself.
Changes can be seen from how it was ten years ago. With all the complex instances where both cryptocurrency and blockchain were dragged into, the promise that a significant regulatory plan for the industry now has a greater chance of possibility.
As authorities start to introduce new laws and regulations to crypto institutions, it is not surprising that people are thinking about how these would affect the crypto environment. Will there be stricter management that will positively make a change in the industry or will it be a strength to hinder the development of crypto’s infinite improvement?
James Burnie is a financial services regulation and Financial Technology Partner, advising financial institutions on Europe and the United Kingdom financial regulation at a law firm, gunnercooke. They stand for large-scale cryptocurrency and blockchain products and services that are believed to be affected by all laws and regulations that will be implemented in the industry.
However, James does not agree that newly introduced rulings will cause trouble. Instead, he said that a certain level of laws and regulations is necessary.In an interview, topics on the future of the cryptocurrency environment and the regulations that come with it were discussed.
James remarked that he is attracted to breaking new ground since regulation is amusing, especially when one is viewing it as something where development may root from.
The start was when he worked on the very first and fruitful establishment of cryptocurrency assets (also known as the initial coin offering) from the United Kingdom. For the reason of its success and just several lawyers in the said country were into the industry as it started, his involvement expanded.
In the course of time, instead of treating cryptocurrency as just a hobby, it became his primary job.
A company whose focus is on corporate and commercial disciplines, Gunnercooke has approximately five hundred employees around Europe and has an income of GBP 50 million.
They have the United Kingdom’s widest crypto and financial technology service having more than one hundred customers, and a large market in Germany directed by Wolfgang Richter.
Lately, they just launched a practice conducted by Kathryn Dodds which introduced blockchain and creative industries for music, media, and arts.
Further, they work with transactions involving the blockchain industry, which includes designers and developers, cryptocurrency custodial solutions, blockchain applications, crypto trading, trading through distributed ledger technology (DLT), virtual asset brokers and funds, and financial technology organizations.
Worldwide, the initial mark where regulations started was from these two primary regulatory regimes:
Nevertheless, this is eventually turning into a more complicated arrangement. Several examples can be seen below:
Hence, one can observe a fascinating exchange among regulators whose objectives are just a single thing, which is to make the right decision regarding cryptocurrency management, but in contrast, have different perspectives on what that implies in reality.
It is noteworthy that investing is only one of the usages of cryptocurrency assets. Several activities do not include this, and hence, it is not substantial for these activities that virtual assets used for investing are inconsistent.
However, when one looks at these assets like an investment, volatility may not be the issue and it will all depend on what one is obtaining. The principal issue would be the degree of risks and returns.
All of us know that low-risk assets are expected to have a lower return, and high-risk assets tend to give a higher return.
Taking this into consideration, cryptocurrency belongs to high-risk ones. If crypto enthusiasts know this wisdom, they would handle their assets responsibly and that there is no need to be anxious. For instance, it is significant to hold your assets just right, not overly exposed.
Therefore, it was suggested by the Financial Conduct Authority FCA that virtual asset traders should be limited by the law to not exceed ten percent of their overall asset value.
In contrast, one should be more careful of the low-return / high-risk investments because in these transactions investors mistakenly take them as lower risk than they already are.
As a definition, regulation means that there is a rule maintained by authorities for a certain project or activity. It just plainly suggests that these regulators want to do the “right thing”.
In particular, European authorities are prioritizing the rights of each person, as such, they focus on ways to protect their consumers and legislation like EU General Data Protection Regulation. Another is in the United States of America wherein they concentrate on corporation rights thinking that the corporate world is the foundation of their economic system. China, on the other hand, goes with their state, as they consider it as the one who can provide the best decisions for the people of their country.
Thinking about development, people should not think about the laws and regulations as blockers to the industry’s growth. Instead, the concern is how they could turn these regulations as just an objective to how they will be obtained, specifically, the “right thing”.
What’s more mind-boggling is the question of how these could be fulfilled given that there are numerous ways and methods by different parties involved.
At the present time, we can see various authorities discuss the backbreaking demand for crypto’s technological development, and are putting an attempt to balance risk and opportunities in an industry wherein progress is still ongoing.
In the United Kingdom, they have the FCA’s CryptoSprint as a welcoming provision. They just hosted their very first CryptoSprint events in May and June 2022. The objective of the events was to seek industry views on the current market and the design of an appropriate regulatory regime. This is showing that the country’s board of regulations is engaged with the developing pace of the cryptocurrency, especially when it comes to its laws.
Is it needed? Yes, but to some degree. Why? Because regulations take off the nasty stuff in the industry. It just needs to be on the correct side and recognizes the broadness of the environment.
It can be illustrated by taking a game company as a case. In this illustration, the company rewards the winners of the game with some cryptocurrency tokens and these tokens unlock another level of the game, which in turn grants a different account that offers token-lending services seeking a profit for the investors. Looking into this, any law or regulation concerning virtual assets is required to have sensitivity in the market, should be adaptable, and be open to any change.
Most cryptocurrency enthusiasts yearn for a standard line of attack when it comes to laws and regulations wherein the main point is to have the sole correct answer to regulatory questions. This will make the legal cost of operation to be reduced, but it is more than just a dream than a reality.
As James commented, his expectation of the regulation runs by having various strategies, though it may seem complex, these variations may provide more positive impacts on the industry than just confusion.
Specifically, every unique enterprise paradigm is anticipated to be drawn to the regulatory regimes that are most suited for that specific business. However, this does not imply that they are competing to be seen as cheaper than other companies because an operation led by a good administration provides consolation to the consumers and co-contractors concerning the stability of the said companies. Hence, the strategy will come up as something to serve their clients a “premium”.
People are now torn between traditional financial methods and the virtual asset world. Just like how it was during the iPad versus computer period, most businesses that are using blockchain on their model, have several things in common with the conventional methods. This brings about the criticism on why someone would change a process that is currently working. However, “working” in this sense only denotes that users have been putting up with it since there is no available substitute, not that it is working well and efficiently.
Supporting this was Burnie’s client some years past. This person never confessed that he only utilized blockchain technology because of the fact that other people considered it unappealing. With this, he just charged one-tenth of the competitors’ rate, while making it more profitable through blockchain.
Another actual example of the advantages of blockchain is transaction reporting. This is by submitting data, which contains information relating to a transaction. These reports are used to detect and investigate suspected market abuse. With respect to the law, trading securities are required to have these kinds of reports.
Having crypto assets being utilized as securities, automation on reporting procedures can be done, cutting down the operational cost. For the upcoming half-decade, it is expected that blockchain technology will spread to all sectors of businesses, and people will not make it something to be anxious about, but instead, a noticeable tool.
Burnie agreed that it is kind of a “practice what you preach” case because it is hard to accept the concept of cryptocurrency if you do not fully take it into your system. Aside from this, it is also important to perceive where it will eventually head.
Fast-paced industries are going ahead with the developing cryptocurrency curve. This is because crypto is now accepted as payment in several businesses, and major organizations like Microsoft Corporation and financial technology corporation, PayPal. Specifically, they are ready to receive bitcoins (BTCs).
Numerous big economical systems are researching how they could integrate cryptocurrency as a payment method along with the conventional currency. While the inconsistency of the present market fascinates public attention, it is still heading into the mainstream and is highly probable that it will become more extensively accepted in the upcoming generation.
Generally, the concept is also more about following the pace of industrial innovations. However, this is contradictory to the traditional viewpoint that each and every lawyer is not into modernization, since gunnercooke has one of the popular cryptocurrency and financial technology services in the United Kingdom. With this, it is reasonable for the institution to accept crypto as payment.
An increase in the need for both customers and future investors in this industry to make payments via crypto is observed, therefore, it is essential from a customer and business view to have both the traditional currency and cryptocurrency as options.
Several enthusiasts of virtual financial markets expressed their disapproval of the move of Celsius, but some agreed to say that it could be for the protection of their users; ETH plunged to 17%.
Crypto Prices :
| Coin | Returns | DACS Sector |
| ETH | −16.4% | Smart Contract Platform |
| BTC | −16.3% | Currency |
| DOGE | −15.7% | Currency |
Venture capitalists had options to compare with in detailing BTC’s plummeting price.
Since December 2020, it sank to its lowest price.
The top cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization plunged to about one-third of its highest value of approximately USD 70, 000 in the past eight months, and less than one-half of how much it was during the first part of 2022.
In twenty – four hours, it dropped to 16 percent, an uncommon scenario of having a double-digit decrease in the crypto’s value. On the other hand, it was down by about 30 percent from May, having a value of about USD 30, 000 due to the crumbled value of another token, terraUSD (UST).
It was indeed a terrible day for bitcoin, and so did for other cryptocurrencies. Computing their aggregated market capitalization, it did not reach USD 1 trillion. This was a first since 2021, despite having inflation fears and bad news from different protocols, such as crypto lending platform Celsius’ advisory that they would be pausing withdrawals due to the “extreme market conditions”.
Ether (ETH), the second only to BTC by market capitalization, has almost the equivalent decrease in value, around negative 17%. It was during the same time span as BTC’s and its lowest since 2021.
On the other hand, CRO was higher than 20 percent at an instance even with the update that cryptocurrency trading would cut off the 5 percent of its employees, almost two hundred sixty jobs. Tron (TRX) and Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) were also down during the same period.
With all the plunge, market analysts voiced out their views, and some even offered instantaneous consolations:
Cryptocurrency’s current adversity tracked the blow of major world stock market indexes, having tech stocks being the most affected. The S&P 500 tumbled down to 3.8 percent, rejoining the bear market – hence, it was at negative 20 percent from its previous value.
Nasdaq, an American stock exchange company, entered the bear market several weeks ago as it plummeted by 4.6 percent. On the other hand, Dow Jones Industrial Average was down by 2.7 percent.
Unexpectedly, the long-established asset – gold, also fell by almost three percent.
Now, investors surely looked out for the United States Federal Reserve’s 2-day meeting, which began last Tuesday and was extensively expected to lead up to a fifty-basis point interest rate increase because of the high inflation. The most updated United States Consumer Price Index report stated that there has been a rise of 8.6 percent, the highest in the last four decades.
Connor of 3iQ positively pointed out that cryptocurrency today is still in the range of its growth band, and corresponds to how it was for the past thirteen-plus years. Further, given the mandate of United States President Joe regarding cryptocurrency regulatory executive order, he emphasized that we are still within the band of volatility for the past 5 years.
However, we can still see that crypto is now in a terrible state, having an uncertain future in the industry.
BlockFi Trading, a platform where you can buy, sell, and trade various cryptocurrency assets, announced that it would reduce its workforce by twenty percent. Rain Financial also laid-off employees, just after Crypto.com and BlockFi’s workforce cut off.
Just this month, Binance, the largest and most known crypto trading platform, paused their clients’ withdrawals for a short time.
Blake from Uphold wrote that virtual assets will now be put to a test if a bigger increase in price will occur. He also said that at this time, extreme market conditions and federal laws are worsening the negative state of cryptocurrency.
Market Prices:
Celsius, a well-known cryptocurrency lending platform, recently announced the pause of their customers’ withdrawals and trading of crypto products as a consequence of the current “extreme market conditions” in the midst of the economic downtrend.
Crypto tokens like bitcoin lost as much as twelve percent of the total market cap as stockbrokers reacted distressfully to the most recent United States Consumer Price Index review indicating that inflation is continuing to rise since May.
Following the mentioned lending platform’s proclamation was an order in April where Celsius announced that investors who are non – accredited are prohibited from transferring their assets.
The company’s crypto products are sought-after among crypto enthusiasts, and they provide earnings on deposits of approximately seventeen percent. This is larger compared to those offered by most financial institutions such as banks.
Throughout the time when digital asset investors are overwhelmed by the bad news, there were various opinions from different market analysts and observers. Several condemned the firm’s decision; however, others think that it was a move to protect their consumers’ funds.
According to the co-founder of Apostro – a “risk management platform that prevents economical smart contract exploits by enforcing safe economical restrictions” – Kate Kurbanova, even if Celsius’ move is not uncommon, it will unquestionably affect the firm’s clients and the company’s goal to utilize centralized financial platform because such occurrence in the centralized financial institution has been happening.
Kate, then, explained that the decision was put through during the 2020’s Black Thursday since cryptocurrencies’ prices dropped drastically at that time and made an avalanche of withdrawals on lending institutions, and their customers lost their investments.
Additionally, Kurbanova emphasized that the clients are choosing whatever risks they think of as reasonable and bearable. These include liquidations that involve risks, and strategies on decentralized applications but with the feature of allowing the users to withdraw their investments at one’s convenience.
Customers even consider utilizing centralized platforms wherein it is more certain when it comes to security, but with a downside of their money being frozen for a definite length of time.
Other industry observers found a similarity regarding the collapse of terraUSD (UST) token during the middle of May, where it drove the prices of other relative cryptocurrencies like LUNA to plummet by around one hundred percent. It also lead the Decentralized Finance’s (DeFi’s) market value to dive by USD 28B.
As per the explanation of the Vice President of WeWay (a blockchain and encryption communication technology company) and Ukrainian entrepreneur, Vadym Synegin, cryptocurrency enthusiasts easily get disturbed every single time negative news or phenomenon about the industry is mentioned.
The businessman furtherly explained that the current cryptocurrency industry responds to the panic scenarios incompetently.
Several crypto analysts suggested that Celsius had options for more competent strategies, in order to offer profit to their customers.
Austin Kimm, the Co-founder and Managing Director of Strategy of Choise.com expressed that looking for liquid assets that can yield a return of USD 1 billion is more feasible than looking for other liquid assets that can make a USD 30 B profit. As per Kimm, the sole answer to the problem is by switching off deposits or moving them into a less liquid form like real estate, or cryptocurrency mining instruments.
At the same time, the Chief Executive Officer of Iconium, a private investment company that invests in digital assets and projects that will lead the decentralized Internet era, Fabio Pezzotti, asserted that Celsius’ decision to pause withdrawals was a proactive move to support the company’s liquidity on staked ether (stETH) token to be stabilized.
Fabio added that there have been rumors regarding Celsius being busted because of Ethereum’s derivative, stETH. According to Pezzotti, Celsius was just forced to pause withdrawals in order to prevent an entire bankruptcy.
For more cryptocurrency news, visit coredo.eu. We also have experts that could help you start with your crypto journey.
Fintech unicorn was once an unfamiliar term in the industry with rare sightings around the world. Ten years had passed, this once-atypical concept had developed immensely, becoming more common with almost 200 fintech unicorns across the globe. These new cohorts of unicorns are changing fintech as we know it, competing with traditional banks, equipped with modern and unconventional economic models.
The term “unicorn” per se is nothing but a magical creature, which even in myths and legends are rare to find. The word itself does not ring much of significance in the financial industry. Or so we thought.
In today’s modern financial market, a unicorn isn’t just some mythical creature that we hear from folklores. For investors and business owners, Fintech Unicorns specifically are defined as late-stage startup companies with valued funding of 1 billion USD.
The term Unicorn was first used in fintech in 2013 by Aileen Lee, a U.S. venture capital angel investor and co-founder of Cowboy Ventures, in a TechCrunch article she wrote, entitled “Welcome To The Unicorn Club: Learning from Billion-Dollar Startups.”
READ HERE: https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club/
At the time the above mentioned article was published, unicorns are rare sightings with relatively small numbers across the globe. However, there were a number of companies who had developed as “super unicorns” as called by Lee, such as Amazon and Google.
Aileen Lee acknowledged in the same article the fact that the term ‘Unicorn’ is not the perfect word to call these companies given that these are actual companies, and unicorns obviously do not exist. “But we like the term because to us, it means something extremely rare, and magical,” Lee explained.
Unsurprisingly, Fintech Unicorns which had made the list from CB insights reaching the $1 billion-mark are mostly coming from 4 countries – the United States of America, Republic of China, United Kingdom, and India.
Even though the rest of the world has shown undeniable innovations in Fintech, many countries are still having a hard time catching up in developing proper strategies to build billion-dollar businesses.
According to Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, for a nation to successfully nurture businesses that will reached the level of Fintech Unicorns, there are usually four main factors that should be considered:
Upon creating the term unicorn in her article, Aileen Lee also coined the Unicorn Club which refers to unicorns in general. At that time, the Fintech industry immediately took a grip of the concept.
A number of companies have been called Fintech Unicorns, becoming “members” of the “club”. No need for membership cards or registrations but gives a badge of accomplishment and boost of confidence for businesses.
In today’s market, the population of companies who have reached the “Unicorn-level” in general and in Fintech specifically, have grown immensely, going beyond being called “rare”. As of writing, there are over 1,000 companies who have been listed as Unicorns by CB Insights, divided into different classifications.
READ HERE: https://www.cbinsights.com/research-unicorn-companies
In this recent unicorn listing released by CB Insights, Fintech Unicorns took on the spot with the most number of companies listed, with over two-hundred (200) firms included.
Most of the Fintech firms who had reached this milestone were known to have been large contributors when it comes to financial and e-commerce services such as:
– Acorns – a financial technology and financial services company based in the United States of America known for micro and robo-investments.
– Betterment – an American financial advisory company which delivers online investments and cash management services
– Rapyd Financial Network – a FinTech Company founded in 2016, which operates globally via regulated regional group companies and several additional local entities
– Razorpay – a company that specializes in payments solution in India that allows businesses to accept, process and disburse payments with its product suite
– Chime – a Fintech company which provides charge-free online mobile banking services
– Cgtz – a leading Internet finance integrated service platform in China specializing in business-to-customer (B2C) debt investment portal, providing various investments products for the individual and small and medium enterprises
– Better Holdco, Inc. – an American company that manages a digital platform for mortgage and related services
A few companies who have been playing in the fields of Fintech, Buy Now, Pay Later, and Cryptocurrency industries had also made the cut including:
– Blockchain.com – a cryptocurrency financial services company which began as the first Bitcoin blockchain explorer in 2011 and later created a cryptocurrency wallet that accounted for 28% of bitcoin transactions between 2012 and 2020
– Klarna Bank AB – a Swedish fintech company catering digital financial services like online payments
– Amount – a financial institution with a variety of products and services for digital and mobile customer experience.
– Plaid – a financial services company that builds data transfer network empowering fintech and related products
– Anchorage Digital – a crypto-asset platform and infrastructure provider dealing with holding, investing, and infrastructure for cryptocurrency and crypto-related products
– Kraken – cryptocurrency exchange and bank based in the United States of America, founded in 2011
– Moonpay – also a digital trading platform for buying and selling cryptocurrencies
There are also a number of names that might be new in our ears such as:
– Happy Money – a lending company that develops and delivers financial products and services
– MobileCoin – a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency platform founded in 2017 branding itself as the first carbon-negative cryptocurrency
– M1 Finance – an American firm founded in 2015, that offers a robo-advisory investment platform with brokerage accounts, digital checking accounts, and lines of credit
– Mercury – a financial firm that offers services for startup companies and investors
As many countries realize the significant factor the Fintech sector contributes in terms of economic advancement, we may see a future of the Fintech market with an intermixed leaderboard for the top list of Fintech Unicorns. This is also coming from the fact that many of these countries are starting to establish business and economic models that promote further technological advancement and innovations.
When talking about rising countries that may alter the course of Fintech leaderboards in the future, there are two nations that experts are looking into – Brazil and Malaysia.
Home to over three hundred (300) Financial technology companies and holding the title of being the second largest fintech hotspot in Latin America, Brazil could soon produce billion-dollar fintech unicorns. According to some analysts, the financial market of Brazil seems to be going into the right track of development.
Innovations could be expected as the Central Bank of Brazil takes proper actions supporting market competitiveness and promoting financial education. The Central Bank has also started the establishment of open banking early last 20, which was deemed as a favorable action for many fintech companies.
On the opposite side of the globe, many finance experts are looking forward to how Malaysia would rise into the future. Given the country’s huge portion with unbanked and underbanked areas, Malaysia is deemed as an opportunity-haven for fintech.
More so, one key factor in the country is its high rates in terms of internet penetration. With the recent data available, almost 50% of Malaysia’s financial sector are companies that specialize in online products and mobile services.
As these countries work on rectifying their economic strategies, it will be a scene worth-to-watch which nation will be the next home for fintech unicorns.
The number of unicorns, in general, has been immensely growing since the term was used by Aileen Lee almost a decade ago. As of June 2022, there are over 1,100 unicorn companies under the list by CB Insights.
Based on the recent study made by Crunchbase early this year, the general demand for sound investments attracted businessowners to invest into start-up companies, helping them into becoming unicorns by reaching the 1billion-dollar mark.
This same study indicated that numbers of unicorns show fintech hubs and crypto companies usually rose in valuation during the initial phase of fundings. Based on Crunhbase’s own unicorn list, over twenty Fintech companies reached the $1 billion-mark last 2021 during the early phase, while sixteen crypto hubs did the same.
For now, how the number of unicorn club ‘members’ will change in the future is not certain. A number of studies suggested that the sudden upsurge of unicorns last year 2020 and 2021 was a surprising scene in Fintech, indicating that this might result in a more challenging fund accumulation.
There were also some indications that reaching the unicorn-level of funds may not be as huge as many see it to be. It has been suggested that the mere chance of earning this label might not be enough to draw investors without proper outputs from the companies.
