SUMMARY
Governments could set up their own cryptocurrencies, says IMF
Cryptocurrencies are the evil spawn: ECB
After celebrity accounts, Google’s G Suite Twitter account hacked, promising free Bitcoins
Bitcoin, in its game of Snakes and Ladder, has been running into snakes only, and one after the other. This week was no different. The cryptocurrency plunged by $1,000 to $5.3K on November 15, after maintaining some consistency at $6.5K for nearly six months.
Ethereum, having lost around $4 Bn in market cap, has now been ranked at No. 3, behind Ripple. The entire cryptocurrency market cap this week has come down by approximately $30 Bn to $182 Bn.
Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, in his The New York Times column ‘Transaction Costs and Tethers: Why I’m a Crypto Skeptic’ had once pointed out, “…cryptocurrencies have made very few inroads into actual commerce. A few firms will accept them as payment, but my sense is that this is more about signaling — look at me, I’m cutting-edge! — than about real usefulness.”
With increasing electricity cost and plunging Bitcoin value, while Bitcoin mining has gone for a toss, is Paul Krugman’s skepticism about Bitcoin for real?
Troubling times for Bitcoin. However, this may not be the case for cryptocurrencies at large, as the IMF has now supported the idea of fiat cryptocurrencies.
Let’s take a look at this week’s development!
Govts Should Set Up Own Cryptocurrencies: IMF
Governments should consider offering their own cryptocurrencies to prevent the systems becoming havens for fraudsters and money launderers, said Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund.
According to a The Guardian report, Lagarde said that central banks had to work quickly to establish digital cash for burgeoning networks of private financial transactions or risk their mushrooming into trading networks that were inherently unstable.
Crypto Is The Evil Spawn: ECB
While IMF head Lagrade has supported the idea of governments releasing their own fiat cryptocurrencies, European Central Bank (ECB) executive board member Benoit Coeure has stated that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are the evil spawn of the 2008 financial crisis, reported Bloomberg.
He further added that was an extremely clever idea, but not every clever idea is a good idea. Speaking at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Coeure seconded the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) chief Agustin Carstens’ idea that Bitcoin is a “combination of a bubble, a Ponzi scheme, and an environmental disaster” and said, “Few remember that Satoshi embedded the genesis block with a Times headline from January 2009 about U.K. banks’ bailout. In more ways than one, Bitcoin is the evil spawn of the financial crisis.”
Google’s G Suite Twitter Account Hacked
After hackers hacked a series of validated Twitter accounts including retail giant account Target and made millions by promising free Bitcoins last week, it’s now the Google’s G Suite account.
According to various reports, on November 14, Google’s G Suite’s account fell victim to the same ploy. As done previously in the name Elon Musk, hackers again promised to give away 1-20 free Bitcoins but asked to deposit 0.1 to 2 Bitcoin to a particular wallet for the verification of senders’ addresses.
People believing in validated accounts start sending Bitcoins to the given address and never get any return.
Crypto Is Not Real Currency: KPMG
Accounting firm KPMG, in its report, ‘Institutionalisation of Cryptoassets’, has maintained that cryptocurrency assets, like Bitcoin do not have all attributes of real currencies and that using Bitcoin as a store of value is a “fool’s errand.”
The report said, “To fulfill the requirements of store of value, cryptocurrencies must be much more stable. Consider for a moment extending a person or entity a loan in a cryptocurrency. The value is too unstable at the moment to be assured repayment. Under these conditions, neither lenders nor borrowers would be willing to take the risk of transacting in cryptocurrencies. After all, extending credit in a currency that risks significant devaluationor borrowing if the value appreciated beyond the borrower’s ability to pay would be a fool’s errand.”
OKCoin Launches In Latin America
US-based OKCoin recently announced the launch of its licensed exchange platform in Latin America by offering fiat-to-crypto trading between the Argentine peso and several major cryptocurrencies. The exchange offers cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, Ripple, Cardano, Stellar, Zcash and 0x. The exchange plans to open an office in Buenos Aires and build up a team to support its business throughout Latin America.
In other news, Tokyo police has arrested eight men in connection with a pyramid scheme that apparently collected about $68.42 Mn in cryptocurrency from 6,000 people. According to reports, the accused are suspected of violating the Financial Instruments and Exchange Law by not registering their business operations with authorities.
