Tough times for Crypto?

Browsing the news

This morning, as usual, I was browsing for the day's crypto news. And my eye fell on an article that states that Gary Gensler, the chairman of the US stock watchdog SEC, makes it clear that he is a strong supporter of taking a tougher approach to crypto in general. He said Tuesday evening in the US Congress that he wants more powers in the crypto market.

"We need to prevent transactions, products and platforms from getting through the cracks of the law and be able to protect investors in this volatile market",

The SEC chairman said.

Gensler also believes that many cryptocurrencies should be supervised by the SEC because they behave on the exchange like ordinary securities, such as stocks and futures. “Americans buy, sell and borrow cryptocurrencies on all kinds of platforms and there is a serious gap in investor protection,” Gensler said.

Now, you can ask yourself whether that gap is mainly a problem for the investor, or whether the gap is mainly to be found on the government / regulatory side. And if they really worry about the investor loosing money, or whether they worry about themselves loosing money.

Scams

According to the consumer regulator FTC, Americans alone lost 80 million euros to scammers in the crypto market between October and March. Many of those scammers try to reach small investors with less knowledge of the market through social media.

Regulation

Gensler says the SEC will "continue to go as far as possible to deal with the crypto market". Democrat Gensler has headed the SEC since April and is no stranger to the digital coin market. Before becoming SEC chairman, he taught blockchain and other financial technology courses at the prestigious MIT University of Technology in Massachusetts.

Chinese bank continues to pressure Crypto.

Gensler is not the first to call for more regulation in the crypto market. Politicians in various countries have also been asking this for some time and the Chinese central bank said last weekend that it would continue to put the crypto market "under pressure".

Ban on Crypto?

In the Netherlands, Pieter Hasekamp of the Central Planning Bureau (CPB) argued in favor of banning cryptocurrencies. He wrote an essay for that, and it contained the following, among other things;

“Money has three functions: unit of account, means of payment and store of value. How well a particular currency performs those functions depends on several factors. For use as a unit of account, value retention is especially important: nobody likes to calculate in currencies whose exchange rate yo-yos back and forth. Ease of use also plays a role for the payment function: it is not so convenient to pay in gold bars. In addition, security is important: what is the risk of theft and fraud? Security and value retention are also essential for use as a store of value.

If we measure government money (dollars, euros) against the above yardstick, it scores well in terms of value retention. In recent decades there has been hardly any currency devaluation. Although inflation is now cautiously rising, there are few people who believe that we are returning to the figures from the 60s and 70s. The ease of use also scores well, especially now that we use electronic equipment in every possible way in addition to the classic technology (banknotes, cheques). can afford.

Security is therefore slightly less good: digital data protection is a concern and cyber theft and fraud are on the rise. But all in all, the current monetary system – with independent central banks, banking supervision and deposit guarantees, an advanced payment infrastructure – works quite well in practice. Further improvements are conceivable: many central banks are now working on digital versions of their currency: central bank digital currencies.”

After which he continued with the story that with Cryptocurrencies this would all be much worse, of course.

There was no value retention of a Cryptocurrency, and certainly no ease of use, and of course the security was also very sad, according to him. The only thing Cryptocurrency was good at was anonymity, and the latter is, of course, just another invitation to criminals, according to him.

This again paints the picture that Cryptocurrency is mainly used by criminals.

^{I really start to feel like a very bad person with all my criminal activities in trying to grow some wealth instead of working like a slave for the government and not having any money at all}

This happened on June 11 this year. On July 3, Minister Hoekstra admitted that a Crypto ban at the national level is not really possible. Good news for every Dutch Crypto enthusiast.

Nevertheless, these kinds of news reports make it clear that at a higher level, hard work is being done on ways to contain the Crypto. And what are all these messages going to do to people's mentality. We hope for a mass adoption of Cryptocurrency, but will that still happen if the governments in many countries are so opposed to Crypto in general? Many people will follow the example of the government, and therefore continue to see Crypto as something very negative and bad.

I am very curious how this will develop further in the near future!

Then on to some lighter news.

I didn't sit still during my 'vacation'. No, I haven't blogged as actively as usual. Certainly not, but hey, that's what the holidays are for, right? But what I did do is something some may have already discovered.

I have created a new curation account for LeoFinance. @foreverhero. And that also means that I have used a powerdown of all my Leos on my main account, which I will continue to use for the time being to write my blogs. And those Leo's are all going to be staked at @foreverhero again.

Why? Because I also know that if you do all curation with an account, this certainly does not ensure a maximization of your curation rewards. And yes, now that I realize more and more that I should consider this as my work here, (What a conclusion after being active here for over 3 years), it was really time to take this much more seriously. And that means I will spend more time on manual curation. But if I put the time into it, I also want to get the most out of it. So a Leo curation account had to come first.

I don't know yet whether I will do this for multiple tribes. It could be...but that depends a bit on how much time I have AND if I can manage to rekindle my photography passion.

I did get the idea in my head that I should focus more on food and landscapes photography, but unfortunately there has been a disturbance between my head and limbs in terms of thinking and doing lately. That way I can have great ideas, and believe me...the ideas really do fly through my head in large numbers. Unfortunately, I am currently running into another limit. Which is also in my head, so that I immediately feel blocked, as it were, and as a result nothing gets out of my hands.

The fact that I also see life every day as a routine, and get little mental or visual input lately, doesn't really help that either.

The summer, which should have been my time, is not a summer here in the Netherlands this year. Rain every day, temperatures that lag behind, and sometimes even just cold. Due to still Corona measures, it has not really been possible to do much, the photography club has been silent for a year and a half.

And I have even considered canceling my membership. Now, just this week I saw that another physical meeting is planned for September 7, but I still have to seriously discuss with myself whether I still feel like continuing with the photography club. Because right now I don't feel it at all. And that is also something that I struggle with myself, because if there has been anything that has kept me going in times of depression and setbacks, it is the love for photography and creating of images and memories, besides my partner and dogs.

But in any case ... the leo curation account is active. So if you discover a (small) vote from @foreverhero, and see a comment from that account. That's no stranger, but that's me with my new curation account.

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