🌐 Global Digital Finance Opposes Crypto Banning For Retail Traders In Hong Kong
Industry organization Global Digital Finance has opposed the introduction of a law banning cryptocurrency trading for retail traders in Hong Kong.
Global Digital Finance includes cryptocurrency exchanges BitMEX, Huobi, Coinbase and OKCoin. The group believes that if the law comes into force, it will severely restrict legal cryptocurrency trading among professional investors, blocking access to the market for 93% of the local population. According to a recent CitiBank poll, about 504,000 people (7%) have enough assets to become professional investors. The proposed bill will encourage traders to use unregulated platforms.
In November, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) planned to regulate all cryptocurrency exchanges in the administrative region in order to tighten measures against money laundering and terrorist financing. The initiative aims to ensure that Hong Kong's cryptocurrency regulations are in line with the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF). In January, the Hong Kong government held consultations with the public and industry players on the issue.
The consultation period has now come to an end and the bill is expected to be submitted to the Hong Kong Legislative Council at the end of the year. However, Global Digital Finance Advisory Board Chairman Malcolm Wright said the ban on cryptocurrency trading for retail traders exceeds FATF requirements. This speaks to Hong Kong's overly tough stance on digital assets. Wright cited the example of Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States, which, as members of the FATF, allow retail traders to trade cryptocurrencies.
The Hong Kong Bitcoin Association has also stated that restricting retail traders' access to Bitcoin would be an excess of government authority. The proposed restrictions may apply to ATMs as well. This will significantly slow down the development of innovation and limit access to financial services. At the same time, Hong Kong regulators have a positive attitude towards digital currencies of central banks. In July, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) expressed its readiness, together with the People's Bank of China (PBOC), to test the digital yuan for international payments.
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🌐 Bitcoin miners earn about 1 BTC per block on commissions
According to Clark Moody Bitcoin, the average income of Bitcoin miners on transaction fees is 0.97 BTC per block (about $ 48,000) and $ 20 per transaction. This indicates an increase in transaction volumes.
Clark Moody Bitcoin specialists take the average of the last 2000 blocks. Miners receive a fixed remuneration that is halved every four years (from 2020 to 2024 it is 6.25 BTC). In addition, miners receive transaction fees that users pay. Recently, fees have increased, and are around $ 20 per transaction. According to analysts, today bitcoin miners earn a total of about $ 40 million per day. At the same time, commissions account for 13.47% of the total miners' income.
Quantum Economics analyst Pedro Febrero believes that the increase in fees is a good sign, as it means that Bitcoin adoption is accelerating. Given that mining rewards decrease over time, the increase in fees will compensate miners for the decrease in block rewards. This will give miners an economic incentive to keep the network up and running.
“Typically, fees go up when there is more competition to add a transaction to a block. But this can scare off potential buyers, especially those with small deposits. On the other hand, the surge in commissions is due to the increase in the number of users, and this is normal. Developers are trying to fix this problem by increasing block capacity with SegWit and Lightning Network solutions, ”said Febrero.
Recall that last week the bitcoin rate exceeded $ 48,000. Therefore, bitcoin miners managed to earn more than $ 4 million in just an hour amid growing fees.
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🌐 L2 Lab Launches ZKSwap Decentralized Exchange Based on ZK-Rollups
L2 Lab has announced the official launch of ZKSwap, a decentralized exchange built on the ZK-Rollups, a second-tier solution for the Ethereum network.
Through the use of ZK-Rollups and the use of zero-knowledge proofs, developers expect to significantly increase network bandwidth and reduce transaction processing fees.
These problems, according to representatives of L2 Lab, are the "bottleneck" for the development of the DeFi industry. Moreover, the number of transactions on the Ethereum network in January reached a record high of 37 million.
On the very first day, the ZKSwap exchange began to support the trading of 30 ERC-20 tokens. At the moment, $ 63 million has been blocked in the protocol, and the daily trading volume was $ 2.7 million.
“ZKSwap is fully functional and very user-friendly. We believe that decentralized exchanges based on second-tier solutions have every opportunity to lead the market. They represent a completely new stage in the development of decentralized platforms, ”said Alex Lee, head of development at ZKSwap.
In November, L2 Lab received $ 1.7 million to develop the exchange, with Bixin Capital, SNZ Capital, FBG Capital and Longling Capital participating in the funding round. A test version of ZKSwap was launched at the same time.
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🌐 Justin Sun denies hiring celebrities to promote TRX
YouTube blogger Marquez Brownlee submitted an email inviting him to promote the Tron cryptocurrency. The Tron founder has denied any involvement.
Famous YouTube blogger Marques Brownlee, with an audience of over 13.5 million subscribers, provided details of an email he received from a "partner" of the Tron cryptocurrency project. Brownlee stated that he was asked to promote the TRX cryptocurrency for a fee. However, according to the letter, celebrities should not mention that this is paid content. Everything should look as if a person expresses his own opinion about cryptocurrency and speaks about it on his own behalf.
Under the rules of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), it is illegal to promote anything without disclosing that the work was paid. In his video, Brownlee stated that celebrities Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Cerny, NeYo and Lil Yachty have already participated in such advertising campaigns, who have recently become interested in cryptocurrencies.
“The letter says that the Tron cryptocurrency post should not sound like a sponsored tweet or sound like dictated text,” Marquez said.
Tron's management denies any involvement in this letter and claims it has not interacted with the cast and singer on the matter. However, in a recent interview with Bloomberg, Tron CEO Justin Sun said he plans to attract more celebrities to promote TRX as a "friendly" cryptocurrency. Sun has now recommended that celebrities who have received payment to promote Tron contact the project team to clarify the matter. According to Sun, transparency is a key factor in Tron's operations.
Justin Sun said earlier that Tron's top priority is to list TRX on US cryptocurrency exchanges that are compliant with regulators.
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🌐 Uniswap Decentralized Exchange Trading Volume Exceeds $ 100 Billion
The Uniswap Decentralized Exchange was the first in the DeFi industry to reach a total trading volume of over $ 100 billion.
As of February 15, Uniswap CEO Hayden Adams said the platform had $ 101.5 billion in transactions. Significant growth in trading volume began in mid-2020, along with the boom in the decentralized finance industry. In the last 24 hours alone, the trading volume on the platform amounted to $ 1.2 billion.
It is Uniswap that has become one of the growth drivers of the DeFi industry - it allows users to add new tokens to the platform themselves. In addition, at the end of 2020, the site distributed 400 UNI tokens to users. At the current exchange rate, this is $ 8,400.
In early February, the volume of crypto assets blocked in the DeFi industry exceeded $ 32.4 billion, and at the time of publication, the figure had already reached $ 40.09 billion.At the same time, the total trading volume on decentralized exchanges in January alone exceeded $ 55 billion.
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🌐 Beeline and Megafon offered to use the digital ruble on smartphones
Russian telecom operators "Beeline" and "Megafon" propose to develop a mobile application and additional services for the digital ruble.
The leaders of Beeline and Megafon proposed to link wallets for the digital ruble to a subscriber number to ensure convenient use of the state digital currency. Users will be able to store digital rubles on their smartphones, make peer-to-peer payments without intermediaries, and transfer digital rubles using a mobile phone number.
In addition, cellular operators will consider the possibility of creating additional services for the digital ruble, since the connection of customers with the Central Bank of Russia is insufficient. Due to the massiveness of mobile services, operators will be able to ensure the rapid spread of the digital ruble.
Director of Information Technology Development of the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development (UBRD) Sergey Shcherbinin noted the convenience of storing digital rubles in mobile phones or smart watches. However, he said that settlements with digital rubles would be much safer and more efficient if financial institutions were involved. The more devices that support digital wallets, the more important the centralized management of these wallets and accounts is, as this will increase the security of their interaction.
The management of Bank Zenit believes that in order to reduce risks, it is necessary to bind the phone numbers of users using the digital ruble to their profile in the Unified Biometric System (UBS) and in the Unified System of Identification and Authentication (ESIA).
In the fall, the Central Bank of Russia began a public discussion of the digital ruble. Most Russian banks see it as a threat to cybersecurity and risks of fraudulent transactions. At the same time, some banks have expressed their readiness to take part in testing the digital ruble, which may begin in the first half of this year.
