#币安披萨

Curious, which pizzeria still supports bitcoin payments now?

The shop that sold the first bitcoin-paid pizza, is the owner still selling pizza?

The relationship between the SEC and Coin has also been a roller coaster.

As the first listed company on the cryptocurrency trading platform, the relationship between Coin and the SEC cannot be said to be bad.

After that, Coin also actively communicated with the SEC, wrote a lot of letters, and made many suggestions on policies and industries.

However, there has been no definite reply from the SEC. Of course, this itself is difficult to reply to.

In 2023, the SEC stepped up its enforcement activities, and Coin was also notified by Wells. At this time, the relationship between the two became tense again, after all, it was a matter related to survival.

sensitive issue

Europe’s MiCA at the end of 2022 basically determines the continent’s attitude towards cryptocurrency in the future.

In February France will confirm the law regulating cryptocurrency companies and start implementing it by the middle of the year.

As one of the first countries to clarify how to account for cryptocurrencies in the country, France continues to actively follow the introduction of regulatory laws this time.

The two major European powers 🇩🇪 and 🇫🇷 have shown completely opposite attitudes towards cryptocurrency matters. #crypto2023 #Web3

Noteworthy information from Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission documents

Get informed quickly 🔜


#crypto2023 #hongkongweb3

3/N

In 2021, the government released a summary document and submitted a draft to the Legislative Council;

In 2022, the Legislative Council passed the draft, granting the China Securities Regulatory Commission the power to supervise virtual asset service providers;

2023,

On February 20, the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued regulatory rules and consultation documents;

The collection of consultation opinions will be stopped on March 31;

In 2024, the transition period ends on May 31, and businesses must operate with a license thereafter.

#hongkongweb3

2/N

As a government department, the China Securities Regulatory Commission’s power comes from the power granted by the law. The reason why it has not carried out supervision before is because there is no corresponding power granted by the law. The administrative department should not violate the law and cross the line.

The source of SFC's regulatory power this time is the revised "Regulations on Combating Money Laundering" in December 2022. Through this legislation, trading service platforms for security tokens also need to be licensed and supervised by the Securities Regulatory Commission.

Review timeline:

In 2018, the China Securities Regulatory Commission has realized that the risks of virtual assets are not only money laundering, but also investor protection;

In 2019, the China Securities Regulatory Commission proposed a voluntary regulatory framework to manage security token trading service platforms;

In 2020, the Hong Kong government released a revised document on the Anti-Money Laundering Ordinance to solicit opinions. It is recommended that the trading services of non-security tokens be also included in the management of the China Securities Regulatory Commission; #hongkongweb3

1/N Interpretation of Hong Kong SFC's Consultation Document on Licensing of Virtual Asset Trading Platforms

The Hong Kong SFC released the consultation document on February 20, 2023. This time it was rare to directly propose implementation details.

On this day, it also triggered the market’s speculation on Chinese-concept and Hong Kong-concept cryptocurrencies, and Hong Kong became the new WEB3 holy land.

The content of the document is 312 pages long. I will update some ideas while reading it here. This is just a limited personal opinion and does not serve as any investment advice.

Hong Kong’s licensing and regulatory policies for major infrastructure and exchanges in the WEB3 industry have taken a further step this time.

I am very much looking forward to how the various ecosystems in the industry will unfold under the dynamic rules of Hong Kong in the second half of the year.

#crypto2023

It would be unthinkable for the U.S. government to ban cryptocurrencies.

I think it is just a short-term tightening reaction to a series of things caused by FTX, and these changes should be viewed objectively.

New and clear regulations will gradually be implemented in this industry.

Regulatory situation in South Korea.

The virtual asset speculation activities in the Korean market are very frequent and it is a very representative market. Judging from the "Guidelines for the Reform of the Security Token Issuance and Circulation Supervision System" issued by South Korea in February, South Korea must first manage the business of "issuing stock assets in the form of tokens", which is managed by referring to the rules of securities supervision.

This statement is similar to the regulatory ideas previously announced by Israel, which uses the existing securities regulatory system to conduct certain management of virtual assets.

The British Ministry of Finance released a discussion paper on the regulatory framework of encrypted assets in February. Generally speaking, it has these characteristics: 🏳️‍🌈

1. Manage by activity category, not asset category. I think this is conducive to management based on the nature of financial activities without causing excessive regulatory compliance pressure. For example, if NFT is not used for financial activities, resulting in creditor-debt relationship, interest income, etc., then there is not much legal pressure.

2. Perfectly stated the attitude of all aspects of encrypted asset activities. Various types of businesses in the crypto-asset space are described and well covered. At the same time, it also follows pragmatism very much, and selectively avoids things that cannot be perfected temporarily in practice. For example, for defi decentralized financial activities, the UK chose to wait for international standards before implementing them.

Through the consultation documents of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, we can see that internationalization and convergence of regulatory rules are a firm attitude.

This is related to the borderless and cross-border attributes of crypto assets themselves.

The framework and opinions issued by the FSB (Financial Stability Board) and FSOC (Financial Stability Oversight Council) in October 2022 are important reference information.

The first "Super Central Bank Week" of the new year is coming - investors will welcome the latest interest rate hike decisions of the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England within one day on February 2 (Thursday), Beijing time. At present, with the gradual easing of high inflationary pressures, the market has generally expected that the Federal Reserve will further reduce the rate hike to 25 basis points at this meeting.

Based on the fact that the current trend of tokens such as BTC and ETH is close to that of the U.S. stock Nasdaq and S&P 500, investors should pay attention to the Fed’s speech and the performance of the U.S. stock market.

To a certain extent, it can guide short-term investment in cryptocurrency.

[Progress of Stablecoin Supervision]-Hong Kong

After the Hong Kong Monetary Authority issued a consultation on stablecoins in early 2022, it also released its progress on stablecoins on the last day of January 2023.

The rules are becoming clear.

It is mentioned that stablecoins are priced with reference to fiat currency, and will be included in the scope of supervision, no matter what its stabilization mechanism is. In other words, coins from algorithmically stable sources will also be included in the scope.

On the server side, wallet services, management services, distribution and other links are all included in the supervision.

Only the issue of license issuance and applicable laws has not yet been determined, but from the time planning point of view, 24 years is the latest time.

Coinbase yesterday’s $50 million settlement, here are more details you might want to see.