Our experts talked about the influence of news from Hong Kong on the digital asset industry. And how leading cryptocurrency exchange prices will react from opening a new cryptohub in Asia

As of June 1, retail investors in Hong Kong will be able to trade cryptocurrencies on licensed platforms. On May 23, Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) published a report on regulatory requirements for cryptocurrency trading platforms. These regulations will go into effect at the beginning of the summer.

The regulator collected comments from market participants before publishing the document. It received 152 responses, including from Binance, Coinbase, Huobi, OKX, Kaiko, Matrixport, Ripple Labs, PricewaterhouseCoopers and many others. The rules were developed in response to comments received. Any of the licensed trading platforms that will comply with them. It will be able to officially provide services in the region.

According to the document, as the regulatory mechanisms for stablecoins are scheduled to be implemented only by 2024. That is until these assets will be allowed by the commission in retail. And tokens available to retail investors must meet certain criteria. At a minimum, they must be included in two indexes from unrelated companies. Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) meet this criterion. As well as Polkadot (DOT), Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), Avalanche (AVAX), Polygon (MATIC) and Chainlink (LINK).

According to the new rules, exchanges advertising specific cryptocurrencies are banned. As well as products that offer yield, staking and lending.

“Ultimately, the primary activity of a licensed trading platform is to act as an agent. And providing the ability to match orders between clients. Any other activity could lead to a potential conflict of interest. And requires additional safeguards,” the document states.

The platform operator is required to keep 98% of customer assets in a cold wallet. But for rare cases, for which a separate authorization from the SFC will be required.

Perspectives for the Asian region

The adoption of comfortable cryptocurrency legislation in Hong Kong will definitely be perceived positively by the market, our experts believe. The past few months have been marred by pressure on the industry in the United States. And because of that, many companies were forced to leave the region.

Also, prospects for cryptocurrency legislation in the EU are still unclear. And the recently adopted MiCA rules are not so transparent and do not fully reflect all the complexities. Crypto industry participants may face if they bet on the European Union.

Over the next few years, China will have an opportunity to regain some of the market lost after the ban on mining and cryptocurrencies. Access to digital assets through Hong Kong will increase capital allocation. And it will provide legal entry to the market for serious investors from one of the largest economic centers in the world.

Hong Kong’s goal is to become a major player in a region where the adoption of cryptocurrencies in countries such as Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore And many others, at a pace outpacing the rest of the world. Our experts do not rule out the possibility that investors from mainland China will use this jurisdiction. And this will cause a new surge in investment and capitalization growth in the crypto industry. Which has been suffering from a lack of Chinese investors, who are not allowed to work with cryptocurrency, for several years now.

Positive effect on cryptocurrency market in general will be long-term

Creation of a new region with sufficient crypto-regulation. And that will allow new participants to enter the crypto industry officially. All this could be a positive factor for the cryptocurrency market in the second half of 2023, our experts believe.

Also, special attention could be paid to cryptocurrency exchanges tokens. And especially local ones, such as OKX. As they will be some of the projects that will benefit from licenses and new users coming in.

At the same time, the ban on staking, lending and other schemes for making money from crypto exchanges may make it more difficult for them to operate in the Hong Kong jurisdiction.

The news itself has more of a long-term positive effect, but in the moment, the market will have almost no reaction to the new rules. Short-term increase in volatility within standard market fluctuations of 5-10% is also possible.

The renewed approaches can potentially benefit large serious projects with a good reputation like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron and the like.

Just as Bitcoin and Ethereum as market leaders in terms of capitalization will be indirectly in demand. and that will lead to an increase in prices across the whole cryptocurrency market.

Government may require companies storing passwords from cryptocurrencies connected to LedgerRecover to disclose this information. Crypto Upvotes expert review

Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier admitted that authorities could gain access to the private keys of users of hardware cryptocurrencies. And that will be connected to the new Ledger Recover service. On the What Bitcoin Did podcast, Gauthier noted that this could only happen through the courts, so it’s unlikely.

The LedgerRecover service is a voluntary feature that allows users to split a secret phrase (seed-phrase, or private wallet key) into three pieces. And send them to three third-party companies for storage.

If the secret phrase is lost, it can be recovered. At the same time, by combining these three fragments on the Ledger device and passing identification. Ledger Recover costs $9.99 a month.

The new service has sparked a wave of criticism – users were outraged by the fact that not only the owner can have access to the data on a hardware device.

Ledger shareholder and former CEO Eric Larchevec said. That governments could demand access to user funds stored on Ledger devices that subscribe to the new service. Now users are concerned. And that their funds could be blocked by the authorities if they use the service.

These comments have raised questions for Ledger users. But Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier said such a scenario is unlikely.

According to Gauthier, it is not worrisome because governments only issue such subpoenas for serious reasons. And for example, in connection with events related to terrorism or drugs. The head of the company noted that “the average person doesn’t get a criminal court summons every day”.

Ledger postponed update due to scandal

Ledger postponed the launch of LedgerRecover, a scandalous password recovery service, due to criticism. In a letter to users, Pascal Gauthier, head of the hardware cryptocurrency wallet maker, said. That Ledger won’t introduce the new feature before publishing its open source code.

Ledger does not release all of its product codes to the public. But, according to Gauthier, the company has now learned a lesson from its “unintentional mistake in communicating” with the audience. And it will be publishing operating system and tool codes on an expedited basis.

“We’ve decided to accelerate the data discovery roadmap! We will open up as much Ledger operating system code as possible, starting with the core components of the OS, and LedgerRecover. Which will not be released until this work is completed,” he wrote.

Code openness won’t affect the security of the device or improve it in any way, the company promises. But it will make the information transparent to users. And experts will be able to verify that malicious codes are not present in the devices’ software.

A solo-mode miner was able to mine a block of Bitcoin on equipment with a processing power of 750 TH/s

On May 23, a single miner with a processing power of 750 TH/s. He successfully mined a block of Bitcoin numbered 790,958. This was reported by the administrator of Skrool pool Kon Kolivas.

The miner received a reward for the found block in the amount of 6.25 BTC (about $170,000 at the rate of $27,300).

Total hashing speed in the Bitcoin network on May 23 was 367.07 EH/s. 1 EH/s equals 1 million TH/s. Having a processing power of only 750 TH/s. This lucky miner had only 1 chance out of 489 thousand to successfully find a block.

Lucky miner – a member of the pool for solo-mining Skrool. And he will pay 2% commission (0.125 BTC, or about $3.4k). But in addition to the fee for mining the block, he receives a fee for the transaction. Which in this block was 0.249 BTC ($6.7 thousand).

With the current difficulty of mining with that kind of processing power, a miner can mine a block once every nine years on average. Meanwhile, the difficulty of mining the first cryptocurrency is growing. Since the beginning of the year, it has increased by 40%, and on May 18, the figure renewed its historical high.

Our experts note that in January 2022, a single miner with computing power of 126 TH/s mined a block of Bitcoin and received a reward of 6.25 BTC. And that was approximately $270,000 at the rate of $42,800. His odds were equal to one in 1.36 million

Our experts tell you what you need to know about blockchain interaction technology. And a possible airdrop of the LayerZero project, supported by leading venture capitalists

In April, LayerZero Labs, a company that creates technology to help existing blockchains interact with each other. And announced it had raised $120 million in an investment round led by a16z crypto. This is the cryptocurrency arm of venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz.

The project, launched less than two years ago, has a total investment of $250 million at the time of publication. This is not the first time for LayerZero the large-scale funding round is one of the largest among cryptocurrency companies in 2023. And LayerZero Labs’ valuation of $3 billion puts it on par with market giants like Coinbase, which has a market capitalization of more than $13 billion.

Along with heavyweights Andreesen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, more than 30 investors have invested in LayerZero Labs. And including the venture capital units of Samsung, auction house Christie’s, USDC stabcoin issuer Circle, NFT-marketplace OpenSea, cryptocurrency exchange OKX and others. Participation of representatives of different spheres of activity. At the same time, directly or indirectly related to the crypto-business, probably, indicates the demand for solutions of this project. And their subsequent integration into a wide range of services of Web3 segment.

Interaction of different blockchains with each other

LayerZero Labs co-founder and CEO Brian Pellegrino has assembled a team of developers to tackle the problem of insularity of various blockchains. And the crypto-assets and applications that exist on them. He himself calls LayerZero a “messaging protocol” . That is, software code that allows application developers to send data, for example, from Ethereum to Solana.

By “messaging” is meant a variety of scenarios and operations. This includes, among others, converting coins or tokens from one network into coins or tokens in another. Thanks to the so-called bridges that use LayerZero, this transfer is faster. It is also cheaper and more convenient compared to existing solutions – both decentralized and those that involve an intermediary in the form of an exchange or an exchanger.

What blockchain bridges are and why they are needed

In a press release accompanying the April investment round, a16z lead partner Ali Yahya said. That there are already more transactions flowing through LayerZero than all existing bridges in known ecosystems. He added that “there is already no doubt” that the future of cryptocurrencies is “multichain.” That is, the process of interconnecting multiple blockchains and the assets, services and applications that exist on them. LayerZero already uses decentralized crypto exchanges, including PancakeSwap, SushiSwap, TraderJoe and Uniswap.

Pellegrino dropped out of college to become a professional poker player. When the U.S. government banned online poker in 2011, he already had the capital to launch his first startups. While studying computer science in college, he created a fantasy sports website. Which he sold two years after launching. Then his entrepreneurial career continued: he worked with professional baseball teams. And did research on machine learning algorithms and launched another business before LayerZero.

LayerZero Labs now employs 42 people and is co-founded by Ryan Zarick. Employees work from offices in Vancouver and Hong Kong. The company earns money by charging a commission for every interaction with its protocol. But Pellegrino said the significant amount of funding allows the company to focus on more global goals than maximizing profits alone.

Partners plans to continue to dominate the growing field of companies That offer developers ways to transfer data between different blockchains. LayerZero’s competitors include the Cosmos project. In which developers also position it as a protocol by which different blockchains can send and receive data.

“Our goal is to win and capture the whole market in this niche,” Pellegrino told Fortune. He said LayerZero is using investor funds to expand its Web3-gaming presence. It’s also expanding into the Asia-Pacific region.

Possible Airdrop by LayerZero

LayerZero is known not only for in-demand technical solutions and billion-dollar business valuation. Participants of the cryptocommunity consider the project to be one of the main candidates for a major airdrop.

The company itself has not announced the distribution, as well as the launch of its own token in principle. But certain business patterns and a significant amount of venture capital investment act as indirect evidence That LayerZero may follow the example of sensational airdrop projects such as Aptos, Blur, Optimism or Arbitrum. The latter went beyond the cryptocurrency community in terms of hype. When it became widely known that the participants of the giveaway received tokens worth thousands of dollars.

Service developers often don’t announce the token at launch. But similar parameters in doing business, as well as the experience of their competitors, help community members determine. Which projects will decide sooner or later to release their own asset. And which types of activity can be rewarded.

Even before the sensational distribution of tokens from Arbitrum by so-called drophunters, it was LayerZero that was in the list of the most obvious contenders.

It’s easy to find instructions or detailed checklists with a set of project activities in blogs, thematic channels or chat rooms. Who are using LayerZero solutions, claiming airdrop. It even goes so far that even quite large resources publish instructions on how to participate in an unannounced airdrop, such as the OKX exchange blog. Most of them duplicate each other in one way or another. For example, a potential candidate for distribution must be active in social networks of the project. And attract new members, use existing services in the test network, etc.

It remains to be seen how developers will react to this, if they actually arrange an airdrop. One way or another, from a financial point of view they benefit from any interaction with the protocol. Both from a really interested in the project, and from another “airdrop hunter”.

Mining company Marathon Digital itself has pledged up to $500,000 to develop the Bitcoin Core group by the end of 2023

Marathon Digital Holdings announced a partnership with Brink to raise up to $1 million to support Bitcoin developers Bitcoin Core. Marathon has promised to contribute up to $500,000 by the end of 2023.

Bitcoin Core is a client (software) for the Bitcoin network operated by an independent group of developers. They maintain the blockchain. And also write updates and make decisions on improvements to the first cryptocurrency network. They also maintain the main repository of the protocol on GitHub.

Brink, a non-profit company, is dedicated to supporting the Bitcoin developer community through scholarship and grant programs. The firm was founded in 2020 with funding from John Pfeffer and Vences Casares. The company’s website states that it is 100% funded by donations from individuals. As well as organizations that want to support the Bitcoin network and protocol.

Marathon and Brink have set a goal of raising up to $1 million for Bitcoin Core developers. They announced the fundraiser at the Bitcoin 2023 conference, taking place May 18-21 in Miami, USA. Marathon has pledged to double all contributions from other participants up to $500k by the end of the year, so if the amount of donations from third parties reaches $500k. Then Marathon Digital will also contribute $500k and the $1 million plan will be met.

Our experts note that Marathon Digital is one of the largest Bitcoin miners. The public U.S. company has tens of thousands of cryptocurrency mining devices in data centers in North Dakota, Ohio and Texas. At the end of the first quarter of 2023, Marathon had $1.3 billion in assets, and about $715 million of that was in hardware and $189 million in digital assets.

This new product from the MicroBT WhatsMiner line of machines can deliver hashing speeds of up to 320 TH/s. At the same time, it outperforms similar devices from competitor Bitmain

Chinese mining equipment manufacturer MicroBT unveiled three new mining devices at the Bitcoin2023 conference in Miami. And one of which was the most powerful one currently available on the market.

WhatsMiner M53S ++, has a computing power of up to 320 TH/s with an efficiency of 22 J/TH. This device is more powerful, but more power-consuming. Compared to competitor Bitmain’s counterpart, the Antminer S19 XP Hydro, which produces speeds up to 257 TH/s and has an efficiency of 20.8 J/TH. MicroBT founder and CEO Zuoxing Yan said this.

Our experts point out that the efficiency of WhatsMiner equipment is measured in joules per terahesh (J/TH) – the amount of energy expended to generate one terahesh of hashrate. If the efficiency of the WhatsMiner M53S++ is about 22 J/TH. That means that this device uses about 22 J of energy to generate one hashrate terrahesh.

It takes 7,040 J to generate 320 terrahes per second.
In an hour, 25.34 million J
1 kWh = 3.6 million J
25.34 million / 3.6 million = 7.038
So the device will consume about 7 kW per hour

The other two models presented were the M50S ++, air-cooled and with a computing power of 150 TH/s, and the M56S ++. And also with immersion cooling, this unit can deliver 230 TH/s. The efficiency of both machines is 22 J/TH.

MicroBT believes that the energy crisis and global warming will lead to the modernization of power supplies for mining. And they call “green energy” the best solution. In this regard, MicroBT is working to make WhatsMiner devices better suited to the use of solar energy. That is, from an energy source that corresponds to the decentralization of the Bitcoin network.

Worldcoin has not yet been launched, but scammers have already figured out how to cheat the identification system

The Worldcoin token was supposed to launch within the next few weeks. But fraudsters have already figured out how to cheat the system, The Block reports. The project from ChatGPT creator Sam Altman is being forced to change security measures.

According to the developers’ plans, the Worldcoin token will be issued to users. Who have been identified by iris scanning. The technology scans the eye and creates a digital World ID for the user based on that. Which can be used “in a wide range of everyday applications without revealing identity,” the company said. More than 1.7 million people have already signed up for the project.

On May 18, the Chinese publication BlockBeats, reported that the residents of China, where people can not register. to get Worldcoin tokens, buy iris scans made in Cambodia and Africa for as little as $30. A Worldcoin spokesman acknowledged the incidents. But stressed that the problem was limited to “a few hundred cases.”

“Through continuous threat monitoring and awareness, the Worldcoin team uncovered suspicious activity where people were encouraged to create a World ID, which was then sent to a third party,” they said.

Worldcoin has taken a number of steps to try to address the problem. And including “adjusting the initial in-person registration process” and implementing dynamic and static QR codes.

The illegal sale of IDs will also be able to prevent them from being returned to the user via a repeat eye scan, the developers believe. However, earlier Worldcoin claimed. About not storing iris scans to exclude the risks of losing confidential data.

The company admitted that despite all these precautions. They don’t fully protect the system from fraudsters’ attempts to circumvent the “one person, one proof” principle.

Our experts note that solving these problems will require innovative ideas in the development of mechanisms and attribution of social relationships.

Our experts tell us how BRC-20 tokens emerged on top of Bitcoin. And why trading in new memcoins led to a record increase in commissions

A new kind of token has appeared in the Bitcoin blockchain, around which there has been a serious speculative frenzy. Most of these tokens are so-called memcoins. Which are named after famous memes and carry no utility or functionality. In spite of this, they have cumulatively risen by tens of thousands of percent in a few weeks. And provoked a record increase in commissions for transfers within the BTC network.

A new mania around memcoins began with the PEPE coin. Anonymous developers launched it in April, and speculators inflated its capitalization to a billion dollars in just three weeks of its existence.

The interest in memcoins created in the Bitcoin blockchain comes from more familiar token-creating networks such as Ethereum or Solana. The excitement swelled to the point that the volume of trading in Bitcoin Frogs collection tokens (the equivalent of Bitcoin token format NFTs) from May 17 to 18 exceeded that of the NFT market’s main “blue chip” – the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection.

New BRC-20 standard

Tokens of the standard named BRC-20 (similar to ERC-20 in Ethereum). They are digital assets that can be created and transferred on the Bitcoin blockchain using the Ordinals protocol. This standard allows data to be written into satoshi and turned into tokens.

The Ordinals protocol has enabled the growth of memcoins placed on the Bitcoin blockchain. But they have no utility whatsoever. Instead, traders are buying them solely for speculative purposes. Tens of thousands of BRC-20 tokens have been issued since the protocol went live in March. And their combined market capitalization has exceeded $1 billion. The ORDI memcoin, which refers to the name of the Ordinal protocol. But probably not related to its developers, is the largest at the time of publication with a capitalization of about $300 million.

Amid high demand, cryptocurrency exchange OKX announced the launch of its own marketplace for trading BRC-20 tokens. And Binance previously announced plans to add support for them on its NFT platform.

The entire current capitalization of new tokens in the Bitcoin network is essentially taken up by memcoins alone. And the Ordinals protocol itself has severely limited functionality compared to Ethereum’s ERC-20 capabilities.

But BRC-20 could be a long-shot story. If the teams that focus on building infrastructure solutions on Bitcoin (wallets, bridges, credit protocols, etc.) now have money flowing in from major venture capital funds. Also, don’t forget that it adds to the attractiveness of Bitcoin itself, says our expert.

High commissions in BTC network

High commissions

The result of the growing demand for memcoins was a surge in Bitcoin transaction fees. And a queue of unconfirmed transactions formed. Transactions related to BRC-20 filled the network. And led to a high load on it, causing the commissions paid to miners to reach the highest level since April 2021. Since the beginning of May, the average fees have risen about 1,500%, to $31 per simple coin transfer.

When Bitcoin’s transaction blocks are full, the transactions with the highest fees are confirmed first. The pending transactions are in a so-called mempool, waiting for confirmation. If under an adequate load on the network, transfers are confirmed in no more than 10 minutes on average. In this abnormal scenario it is possible to wait up to several hours for transfer confirmation. If not to send it with overestimated commission.

Bitcoin’s pool of unconfirmed transactions has skyrocketed from about 10,000 transactions to more than 350,000 transactions. And that triggered an increase in fees globally. But it turned out to be a lucky scenario for miners, whose income increased visibly.

In total, there were more than 4 million BRC-20 transactions in May. And that represents 60% of all Bitcoin transactions. For the first time in many years, a block of BTC transactions exceeded the fixed fee of the miner (6.25 BTC) who mined that block. This was due to the high demand for space in the blockchain, which was triggered by transactions involving the transfer or issuance of BRC-20 tokens.

Such a situation is abnormal according to our experts. Some Bitcoin developers have expressed dissatisfaction with high commissions. And declared about the fight against such tokens. Miners, on the contrary, benefit from the development of this standard. Which brings them more income from commissions. But on the other hand, blockchain congestion will reduce the popularity of Bitcoin. We need to look for a solution that will satisfy investors and miners, says our expert.

Effects and solutions to problems with high commissions

BRC-20 tokens reflect the process of possible future experimentation in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Even if memcoins end up being a passing fad of the cryptocurrency community. They are already having a tangible effect. It may turn out that memcoins will spur developers to further experiment at the base level of Bitcoin. And that will lead to new scenarios for its use. And new sources of demand for space within transaction blocks. This, in turn, could lead to more sustainable commission growth.

The commission market is critical to the existence and security of the Bitcoin network. Because in the future they will have to compensate miners for the diminishing reward per block during subsequent halving cycles.

Rising transaction fees could also force leading cryptoservices to use “second-tier” technology to cut costs. When a sharp rise in fees forced the Binance exchange to temporarily suspend Bitcoin withdrawals. And its head Changpeng Zhao wrote on social media that he was considering adding Lightning Network support to the exchange. This is a fairly well-known, but not yet widespread second-tier payment protocol. Which is built on top of Bitcoin and designed for much faster and cheaper transfers.

Estimates of the implications of the popularity of BRC-20 tokens vary depending on who is making them. Miners, for example, are happy, of course, as their profitability has increased because of the load on the network. But ordinary users are definitely not used to paying a commission and still getting in a huge queue. That is why major market players are thinking about integrating Lighting Network, but it also takes time.

BRC-20 standard cannot compete with ERC-20

Importantly, BRC-20 tokens prevent Bitcoin from competing with Ethereum as a platform for smart contracts, especially at the basic level. A dynamic ecosystem of decentralized applications is deployed on the Ethereum blockchain. This includes credit protocols, NFT, games, social networks and other Web3 applications. Developers can create them using the Solidity programming language. Which allows a wide range of functions and program logic to be implemented. Bitcoin’s base code doesn’t come close to having those capabilities.

Some traders have managed to make high profits by trading memcoins. However, average market participants should be cautious. Historically, memcoins exhibit high volatility and low liquidity. And their prices often only show a decline after a collapse from their peak values during hype.

Perhaps in the future Bitcoin blockchain infrastructure projects will open up investment opportunities. But high fees will certainly remain a stumbling block, especially when the crypto market is bullish.

Ledger, a company that makes hardware cryptocurrencies, said it had always been able to install firmware on the devices that would allow customer passwords to be extracted. This message was later removed

Protecting its new product, hardware cryptocurrency wallet maker Ledger caused a scandal in the cryptocurrency community. With its statement that it has technically always been able to get users’ keys giving access to their crypto-assets.

“Don’t worry about us holding a gun to your head the whole time. And see? It’s not like you’re dead, so there’s no problem with us continuing to hold a gun to your head,” Ledger commented on Ledger’s social media statements.

The company soon deleted its message. But it had already made its way around the web. Ledger later wrote that her words were misunderstood. And there are layers of protection and control in the firmware of its devices to ensure that no hacker (even internal) can introduce malicious firmware.

In response to this, one user noted that when he bought a Ledger device, he was not buying “layers of control”. He was simply buying a cold wallet in which the seed phrase could not leave under any circumstances. Never before has a real-time company ruined its reputation like this, another commenter stated.

Protection from critics

Ledger tried to protect its new lost key recovery tool Ledger Recovery, announced on May 16, from criticism from the cryptocurrency community with its firmware statements. The tool allows you to create a backup copy of a seed phrase. And that will help restore access to the Nano X cryptocurrency wallet in the event that a secret phrase is lost.

The new service breaks the seed phrase into three fragments. Which in encrypted form store three different sides. As Wired reported in February. Those firms would be crypto company Coincover, Ledger itself. And backup service provider EscrowTech.

If a key is lost, the owner of the wallet will have access to its backup by authenticating themselves. The Ledger Recover service will be paid for and voluntary.

The Ledger tool has been very badly received by the cryptocurrency community. The main complaint of users is that the company positioned its cold wallet as a way to autonomously store cryptocurrencies. That is, access keys could only reside on it and not be allowed to leave it.

By adding the ability to upload keys, albeit in encrypted form, Ledger set a precedent. Which completely contradicts its initial claims. According to critics, the new tool reduces the security of the device, making it vulnerable to scammers.

“This is a terrible idea, do not enable this feature,” wrote Polygon Labs Director of Information Security Mudit Gupta.

Also Ledger says this backup option will be popular. That’s because the possibility that assets could become inaccessible simply because a key is lost is a deterrent to investing in cryptocurrencies.

“That’s what future customers want. It’s a way for the next hundreds of millions of people to really move to cryptocurrencies,” Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier was quoted by CoinDesk.

Our experts point out that at the end of March it became known that Ledger attracted funding of up to $100 million. Gauthier said that the company will use the funds received to develop its business, expand its network of distributors. As well as increasing production and improving products.

Regulation of both ordinary financial services of trading and investing in cryptocurrencies will create a false sense of security among depositors, officials say

The U.K. House of Commons Treasury Committee argues that investing in “unsecured” cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum should be equated with gambling. Regulating the industry without such an approach could create an illusion of safety for investors in crypto-assets. That’s according to a committee report released May 17.

The House of Commons Treasury Committee is charged with examining Treasury spending, administration and policy. With all of its agencies and related bodies, including the Internal Revenue Service, Customs, the Bank of England.And the Financial Conduct Authority, the Royal Mint, and other government agencies. And the Financial Conduct Authority, the Royal Mint, and other government agencies.

Late last October, members of the U.K.’s lower house of parliament voted to recognize cryptocurrencies as regulated financial instruments. In their opinion, cryptocurrencies should be considered another type of financial assets, rather than a separate category.

The committee criticized this position in its report, saying that the government should take a different approach to regulating cryptocurrencies. To better protect consumers from losses due to the increased volatility of “unsecured assets,” such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Characteristics of cryptocurrency are more reminiscent of gambling than financial services.

Which is also supported by data on their consumer behavior, the report’s authors say. They argue that regulating trading and investing in crypto-assets as regular financial services would lead depositors to believe that the investments are safe, when in fact they are not.

In addition, the committee recommends that the government take a balanced approach to investing in cryptotechnology. And avoid spending public funds to support cryptocurrencies without a clear and profitable application scenario. It is not the government’s job to promote specific innovations for their own sake, the report warns.

Our experts point out that last year, the kingdom’s government set itself the goal of increasing London’s global competitiveness in the financial sector. And that includes the cryptocurrency industry. The U.K. is in the process of developing regulations for crypto-assets. According to the Ministry of Finance, they are aimed at realizing the government’s “ambitions. Which intends to make the country a leader in the cryptocurrency industry.