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SIMEX Inc., Las Vegas, NV (2026)

01/12/2019

Japan’s top financial regulator, the Financial Services Agency (FSA), announced on Friday that it has approved the registration of Coincheck as a cryptocurrency exchange. Under the country’s Payment Service Act, all crypto exchanges must register with the FSA.

The exchange’s parent company, Monex Group, also issued a press release on Friday with registration details. The announcement reads:

Coincheck Inc … announced today that it has registered with the Kanto Financial Bureau as a cryptocurrency exchange agency in accordance with the Payment Service Act, effective January 11, 2019.

According to the FSA’s website, Coincheck handles nine cryptocurrencies: BTC, ETH, ETC, LSK, FCT, XRP, XEM, LTC, and B*H.

Japan Approves 17th Cryptocurrency Exchange – Its First in Over a YearAfter it was hacked in January last year, Coincheck suspended certain services “to focus on enhancing governance and internal controls by developing business improvement plans and carrying them out,” the company explained. On Nov. 26, services for tradable cryptocurrencies were resumed including depositing, remitting, purchasing and selling.

Coincheck originally applied for registration with the FSA in September 2017. While the regulator approved 16 crypto exchanges throughout that year, it continued to evaluate Coincheck. The exchange was classified as a deemed dealer, which means it was allowed to operate while the FSA reviewed its application.

It has been over a year since Japan’s Financial Services Agency last approved a cryptocurrency exchange to legally operate in the country. Coincheck, which was hacked early last year, has become the 17th fully-registered crypto exchange in the country. The exchange has made numerous improvements a...

01/11/2019

Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, has said that bills on the digital economy will be a priority during the upcoming session. The parliament’s official website revealed this in a press release published Wednesday, Jan. 9.

Speaking at the opening of the parliament’s spring session, Volodin mentioned the digital economy bills that are currently being considered, including the ones on digital financial assets, digital rights and crowdfunding. According to the chairman, the members of the parliament will focus on these bills during the upcoming session.

Volodin also urged lawmakers to create a favorable legal environment for the development of the digital economy in Russia.

Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, has prioritized digital economy bills, including a draft bill on crypto.

01/11/2019

One of the main complaints against investors in cryptocurrencies, as well as against crypto exchanges from the regulators, is that the KYC (Know-Your-Customer) procedure is often violated. That is, it is often unclear to the authorities who is hiding behind a Bitcoin address or a digital wallet. And if in the case of the oldest cryptocurrency, at least according to the U.S. regulators, it is still possible to figure out who is sending the funds, then there are serious concerns about the blockchains of other cryptocurrencies—namely that it will not be possible to verify the transaction participants. The fact is that storing information on the blockchain constitutes a “national threat” to U.S. interests, as said by former CIA officer Andrew Bustamante. But just how rational is requiring the cryptocurrency community to comply with KYC?

On April 18, 2018, Jesse Powell, one of the founders of the Kraken crypto exchange, sharply criticized the demands of the New York authorities to fill out a “regular questionnaire” about the platform’s clientele. He explained that if one carries out everything they have to within the framework of the KYC, then trade in cryptocurrencies can be paralyzed altogether. This did not help, as last year, Kraken was faced with the need to answer on average nine inquiries from 11 U.S. regulatory agencies a week, which is almost three times more than in 2017 and 6.7 times more than in 2016. Obviously, despite the desire of crypto exchanges to work by the rules, they are faced with ever-growing demands. What is going on?

The crypto activist Andreas Antonopoulos draws attention to the fact that modern financial market institutions, from banks to investment funds, already have so much sensitive information about customers that all of this can potentially be used against the users of financial services, including in violation of laws. How else can this “knowledge” be broadened? In addition, the KYC requirements seem meaningless, since the absolute majority of criminals initially had a crystal clear biography and committed criminal acts for the first time. The expert concludes that this is the wrong approach: “If I know you, then you are a good person, and if not, then you are suspicious and should be subject to some restrictions.” Antonopoulos believes that the life of a modern person is already wide open, that social networks, CCTV cameras, and mobile phones record information about people every step of the way, and transferring data to crypto exchanges is no different, so only decentralized cryptocurrency trading blockchain platforms can be in demand in the future.

The fact that crypto exchanges who own information about clients have a great temptation to use it for their own purposes was demonstrated by the preparation of cryptocurrency investors for the annual event that took place on January 3 for the first time, the Proof of Keys. On this day, cryptocurrency holders withdraw, at least temporarily, their crypto assets from crypto exchanges in order to check how much crypto the latter actually own out of what they show on the accounts of the users. How some centralized sites behaved, in this case, has become revealing. On January 2, it was reported that HitBTC was blocking withdrawals. Commenting on this, John McAfee urged everyone to leave HitBTC and other centralized sites and take advantage of decentralized solutions. After a failure in operation on January 3, the Bitfinex crypto exchange stated that it would undergo seven-hour maintenance on January 7, the fact which the head of Binance used to attract customers to his platform. But how is one crypto exchange fundamentally better than another?

The problem remains that crypto exchanges are increasingly looking like obsolete remnants of the past, like the classic NASDAQ or some bank. As Mati Greenspan noted, the absence of Bitfinex online for several hours is a decrease in liquidity on the market. In part, this is the same thing that happens in case of a 51% attack on the blockchain of a cryptocurrency as happened with Ethereum Classic on January 7. It is not clear now what the real price of such an altcoin is, something which Bitcoin enthusiast Saifedean Ammous paid attention to. And if interruptions occur for various reasons on a significant number of crypto exchanges, then how can we assume that the results of trading on them—used by the majority to track the dynamics of cryptocurrency prices and other basic market parameters—are fair? A special issue is the accession of crypto exchanges to U.S. sanctions against individual countries. Obviously, this strikes at the ability of millions of people to have access to the purchase and sale of cryptocurrencies, and a positive assessment of the possibilities of restricting the circulation of crypto coins for political reasons is excluded in the white paper of Bitcoin.

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Why is privacy becoming a matter of life and death for crypto exchanges?

01/09/2019

A high-ranking representative of the National Bank of Ukraine said that an excessive presence of regulators and too many regulations against the cryptocurrency industry in the country is being an obstacle in the development of the cryptocurrency industry.

The banker insisted that instead of bogging down the industry with regulations, the country should implement proper laws and regulations in a balanced manner if the industry is to flourish in Ukraine.

Mikhail Vidyaking, the head of Strategies and Reforms Department at the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), is convinced that the problems that have arisen against the cryptocurrency industry in the country are mostly borne out of bureaucracy. While cryptocurrencies have not been officially defined, which makes them increasingly difficult to keep track of, there are simply too many regulators who have the responsibility of regulating the industry.

It seems that the situation is akin to the phrase, “Too many cooks spoil the broth.”

Vidyakin himself supports regulations in favour of allowing the industry to develop as he believes that the banking sector embracing fintech might open up new and faster channels for the delivery of financial services. However, he said that a systematic approach is needed now, as authorities in Kiev first need to reduce the number of regulatory bodies with oversight of the crypto industry and then draw up a framework that will address the lack of proper regulations and legal definitions for the new financial innovations.

A high-ranking representative of the National Bank of Ukraine said that an excessive presence of regulators and too many regulations against the cryptocurrency industry in the country is being an obstacle in the development of the cryptocurrency industry. The banker insisted that instead of bogging....

01/08/2019

What will you remember the year 2018 for? Just do not say that it will be for the $700 billion worth decline of the crypto market. Last year, the crypto industry received enough criticism, thus “paying” for the record achievements it reached back in December 2017. But for its ten-year history, it seems to be doing quite well. By turning away from the industry now, one is risking becoming a parent who did not witness their child taking its first steps. We decided to recall the main “steps” taken by the crypto market in 2018.

• The first Bitcoin transaction (and many subsequent ones) took place on the Lightning network. On December 27, 2017, shortly after testing the protocol, one of the Lightning developers paid to top up his mobile in the Lightning core network using the Bitrefill service. “Speed: Instant. Fee: Zero. Future: Almost Here,” as he wrote on Twitter. In January, Reddit user btc_throwaway1337 reported on the implementation of the “first Lightning transaction,” when he bought a VPN router from a provider, TorGuard. We can say that he really became the first “regular user” who bought a product through Lightning. Over the year, the network of channels for micropayments in Bitcoin evolved significantly and is constantly being improved by several development teams. One of the latest proofs of Lightning’s power today was the anti-auction arranged by the artist Cryptograffiti when he sold his work to the one who could pay the least sum in the shortest time. The purchase amount was one hundred billionth of a Bitcoin (about $0.000000037 at the time).

• A critical vulnerability in the Bitcoin code was discovered and fixed without damaging the network. The vulnerability, called CVE-2018-17144, was reported to Bitcoin developers by an anonymous user in September 2018. Before this, it existed in a code that went unnoticed for a year and a half since the release of Bitcoin Core version 0.14.0. It could lead to a DoS attack on the network and Bitcoin inflation. The developers of Bitcoin Core released an updated version of the software, and the exploitation of the bug was not reported.

• Nasdaq is preparing to launch Bitcoin futures. Bloomberg was first to report the news on November 27, citing internal sources. In December, Joseph Christinat—vice president of Nasdaq’s media team—confirmed the information, saying that the exchange was awaiting the decision of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and that the futures must be launched in the first half of 2019.

• Ethereum postponed the activation of the difficulty bomb and (so far) avoided hard forks. Last year was intense for the Ethereum community, as among developers, there were heated debates about changes in the code, and the main newsmakers were still referring to the return of the lost funds, which, in particular, would help solve the problem of frozen Parity funds. Even planned changes were hotly debated, such as the Constantinople hard fork, which should be a new stage in the development of the network, and one of the main changes associated with it is the change of consensus algorithm (transition to a Proof-of-Stake). The software update, which had to take place on October 30, was postponed, and according to the latest information, the hard fork will occur in the middle of this month, at block 7,080,000. At the same time, users will see if the developers were able to come to an agreement and whether another “classic” chain, operating according to the old rules, would appear on the Ethereum network.

• Bitcoin Cash implemented a hard fork, breaking up into Bitcoin ABC (with the B*H ticker preserved on most exchanges) and Bitcoin SV. After a lengthy conflict between the developers, the network split into two chains on November 15, at block 556,767. Initially, only a software update was planned, which was prepared by the core Bitcoin Cash development team of Bitcoin ABC. Part of the community, however, did not support the planned changes and proposed an alternative code, which, in their opinion, was more in line with Satoshi’s vision (hence the name of the new chain—SV, Satoshi’s Vision). On the side of Bitcoin ABC was Roger Ver, and on the side of Bitcoin SV was so-called Craig Wright. Apparently, the community of the “former Bitcoin Cash” will have to postpone the debate with Bitcoin and fight each other.

• Russia is working on the regulation of the crypto industry. On January 25, 2018, the Ministry of Finance published a bill on the regulation of digital assets, which defined cryptocurrencies, tokens, mining, and ICOs. On May 22, 2018, the State Duma adopted bills “On Digital Rights,” “On Digital Financial Assets,” and “On Attracting Investments Using Investment Platforms” in the first reading. The Ministry of Communications, RACIB, some other ministries, and the central bank made various proposals in this area. Doctor of Law and Director of the Center for the Digital Economy and Financial Innovations, Elina Sidorenko; formerly Advisor to the President on Internet Development Issues, German Klimenko; as well as journalist and crypto investor Maxim Rubchenko all shared with DeCenter their thoughts on the cryptocurrency and blockchain regulation in Russia.

• The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) did not approve any of the ETF applications. Attempts to launch Bitcoin ETF began in 2013, and by the end of 2017, the SEC was expected to consider applications from companies such as Cboe, REX, Proshares, and VanEck. All this time, however, the SEC either rejected applications or postponed its decision, citing concerns about the liquidity and volatility of the “basic instruments” in which the funds are going to invest. Bitcoin’s fate should have been decided many times in July (the SEC once again rejected the Winklevoss brothers’ application), in August (the SEC had to settle on the Cboe application in partnership with VanEck SolidX Bitcoin Trust ETF), in September (also on Cboe VanEck). According to the latest information, the SEC is going to make a decision on the joint application from Cboe and VanEck before February 27, 2019.

Source & full article

The main achievements of the crypto market over 2018.

12/24/2018

The Japanese Yen has surpassed the US dollar to become the most traded national currency in the Bitcoin-to-fiat market. According to data compiled by Coinhills, the yen now has a 48.34% market share compared to 43.77% for the US dollar, at time of writing.

The Japanese Yen has surpassed the US dollar to become the most traded national currency in the Bitcoin-to-fiat market. According to data compiled by Coinhills, the yen now has a 48.34% market share compared to 43.77% for the US dollar, at time of writing. The third and fourth most traded national c...

12/23/2018

A major business school in South Korea is now offering a master’s degree in cryptocurrency. Crypto MBA is a one-and-a-half-year program that covers topics such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, smart contracts, crypto funds, Dapp planning, game theory, and how to write persuasive whitepapers. Meanwhile, the government is working on follow-up crypto regulations.

A major business school in South Korea is now offering a master’s degree in cryptocurrency. Crypto MBA is a one-and-a-half-year program that covers topics such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, smart contracts, crypto funds, Dapp planning, game theory, and how to write persuasive whitepapers. Meanwhile, the g...

12/23/2018

Bitcoin’s price has been showing signs of growth recently. The $20,000 mark is still far off, although the green color of the digital asset is beginning to calm crypto enthusiasts. How fair is the current price of Bitcoin and how much should BTC truly cost at the end of 2018: $0 (because the bubble has burst), $20, $600, $4,000 or more than $20,000?

At the time of wring, $3,777 was the exact price of Bitcoin, according to Coinmarketcap. But many experts and analysts of the crypto industry do not agree with such a low market valuation market of the first digital asset. For example, Tom Lee, co-founder of Fundstrat Global Advisors, who is well known for his “bullish optimism”, and regularly shares his predictions about market development, believes that Bitcoin is undervalued.

“In essence, Bitcoin’s fair value is between $13,800 and $14,800. But because of the meteoric rally last year the meltdown in the macroeconomic climate and treasury sales during initial coin offerings, the price of Bitcoin is low,” as Lee explained his point of view in a comment for Bloomberg.

Lee’s benchmark in evaluating Bitcoin is based on the ever increasing number of digital wallets and their active addresses, as well as on the high interest in cryptocurrencies. To demonstrate and justify the current cost of BTC, one needs to reduce user demand from 50 million to 17 user wallets, assures Lee.

$20, this is the true price of Bitcoin according to economists Savvas Savuri and Richard Jackman. During a one three-course meal with two bottles of wine the analysts calculated the cost of Bitcoin same way they would with a fiat currency — by using quantity theory of money, which was formalized by Irving Fisher in 1911. Previously we covered the topic of mathematical evaluation of crypto assets and explained key principles behind MV = PQ equation in detail. Without proper transformations and adaptation to the specifics of digital assets, the classical formula cannot be used, since it does not take into account the true nature of crypto coins. Thus errors in calculations are to be expected.

A popular blogger and analyst from the top 10, as ranked by Insider magazine, Ian Balina, during his June trip to Moscow exclusively told DeCenter that in his opinion, the real cost of Bitcoin is underestimated and can be much higher.

“Let's look at the numbers for a better understanding of all this buzz around Bitcoin and its price. Back in 2015, BTC demonstrated an impressive growth of 20%. However, by 2016 Bitcoin gained another 120%, resulting in a sharo price increase going from $400 to $1200. Given this dynamic and the community’s desire to develop the industry, Bitcoin can actually cost more than $15,000. This price will be acceptable,” concluded Ian Balin.

Theoretical calculations that try to evaluate the real price of Bitcoin by using Fisher equation are misleading and confuse many analysts in the crypto community, meanwhile many users express their growing doubts about the decentralized nature of the crypto market and its indicators. Crypto enthusiasts believe that the true price of Bitcoin is not as real as it could be.

In addition, Bitcoin indicators, which are regularly and quickly updated, cannot guarantee the real calculation of the value of the coin. After all, the selection of indicators that will affect the results in various formulas will be unique for each price analysis. At the moment, the crypto community needs to determine the vector of research and concepts that will describe the essence of Bitcoin.

What Bitcoin will become in the future is still unclear. One thing is clear, though: there is demand for cryptocurrencies and their integration into real life. The real and fair estimation of Bitcoin is based on various factors that must be considered when trying to calculate the fair value of the first digital coin.

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The real value of Bitcoin still eludes both analysts and crypto enthusiasts as conspiracy theories abound.

12/21/2018

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies whose development teams are striving to keep their value at a fixed level. Today these coins are developing rapidly. According to the latest data 48 of them are supported by fiat or any physical asset, and another 23 are backed by other cryptocurrencies. 15 stablecoins try to maintain balance by using an algorithmic mechanism that should regulate the number of coins in circulation based on the state of supply and demand at the current market. Another 24 stablecoins do not belong to any of the listed types, but still claim to maintain value, despite market fluctuations. Thus, now there are 110 different types of stablecoins, and their number is constantly growing.

Tether (USDT) remains a key stablecoin tied to the US dollar, which in June raised suspicion among researchers at the University of Texas. They suggested that, in December last year, the influx of such assets into the market led to the emergence of excess liquidity, which pushed most cryptocurrencies to their historical maximums.

The specific gravity of Tether as a means of payment when acquiring Bitcoin, Ether, EOS and Stellar is at its maximum. In the top five cryptocurrencies by capitalization only in XRP, which in mid-November ousted Ether from second place, Bitcoin was considered the primary payment option, and only then USDT. The predominance of Tether in the specific index among the sale and purchase is observed for other assets. Thus, this stablecoin became the cryptocurrency of choice for trading, and this already makes one wonder whether it is good or bad.

And this is even despite the fact that the situation with the backing of each crypto coin by the US dollar is still not fully clarified. In January, the Tether team refused to continue an audit of its finances by Friedman LLP. By June, the company was evaluated by the law firm Freeh Sporkin & Sullivan, LLP (FSS), which was founded by former director of the FBI Louis Freeh. According to the law firm Tether, supposedly, had the money, but the organization’s financial report should not be considered a classic audit document. Same could be said about Bloomberg that joined the whitening efforts of Tether’s image, when it publicly referred to documents showing that in late January the amount of funds in Tether reserves placed in Puerto Rican Noble Bank Ltd ($2.2 billion) corresponded with the number of crypto coins in circulation at that moment (2.195 billion). Meanwhile, Bloomberg did not provide the originals documents, noting that they are not an audit report.

Despite this, Tether, like other stablecoins, which might be dealing with similar issues (i.e. possible participation in speculative attacks on the crypto market and the availability of reserved funds), have received quite broad support in the crypto community. In September, analyst Joseph Young compared the launch of the Winklevoss brothers’ GUSD (Gemini Dollar) to the launch of exchange traded investment funds (ETF) on Bitcoin. On September 10, when he made this statement, Bitcoin was worth $6,296. Anthony Pompliano enthusiastically met GUSD, while Charlie Shrem also supported this project.

However, the expected positive effect on the market from the launch of GUSD was not felt, and Bitcoin has since lost 43% of its value. Despite the fact that GUSD, as Young emphasized, received a license to operate from the New York Department of Financial Services, unlike the situation with Tether, investors still trusted more the FSS conclusion from the former head of one of the influential US intelligence services.

Stablecoins continue to receive support, although their rapid development not only did not cause the market to grow, as Young thought, but, on the contrary, it goes hand in hand with its descent to negative values, although former US federal prosecutor Kathryn Haun argued that “Stablecoins are a very important factor for the cryptocurrency ecosystem that allows players to hedge the risks of volatility.”

The fact that the development of stablecoins "coincided" with the decline of the cryptocurrency market may not be just a coincidence. Obviously, when Tether can be used to control significant volumes of transactions with cryptocurrencies, then those who are behind this stablecoin can take advantage of this. Neither Bitcoin Cash hard fork, nor Bitcoin’s “bubble” and other cryptocurrencies that Nouriel Roubini wrote about with malicious joy are the reason for the market decline, as said by eToro analyst Matthew Greenspan and Tom Lee from Fundstrat Global Advisors.

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The stablecoins are gaining a chokehold on the crypto market.

12/16/2018

Diminishing of leading assets is still taking place on the cryptocurrency market, which is related to the continuous stream of bad press. This leads to even more disappointment among the people interested in the subject matter and to closure of a number of project including those that have a stable fanancial income. All of this would look like the last step to depseration and disappearance of cryptocurrency for an inexperienced investor. Howver, this is an opinion of beginners that should be capitalized on to earn along with big capital.

We should start with very news that might have consequences spanning multiple years into the future, not unlike the story of bankrupt exchange platform Mt.Gox. In the past couple days Japanese prefecture demanded to imprison the platform's founder Mark Karpeles for 10 years on charges of financial theft equivalent to $3 million USD during a hearing at the Tokyo district court.

The existence of this cryptocurrency trading platform came to a close during February 2014 with its story still being relevant to this day. A similar story is happening right now as the general director of Intangible Labs Nader Al-Naji has officially announced closure of the project meant to create stablecoin Basis. Official reasoning cited was impossibility of publishing a stable currency which would be supported with "basic shares" and "basic obligations" auctions as opposed to being tied to US dollar exchange rate, Euro, or other currencies traditionally used in this fashion. Project's lead insisted that Basis was 100% ready but its release was prevented thanks to the unresolved negotiations with American market regulator SEC. The government agency demanded registration as securities and limit the number of asset owners only to those meeting the regulator's requirements for USA residents. The project was discontinued even though its lawyer team originally insisted there was no need for such requirements. This raises the question of returning funds to the investors which include such venture companies like Google Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz which helped to accrue investments up to $133 million USD.
The same public announcement mentions that "almost all funds" will be returned. However it is to be expected that many unhappy investors might demand returns on all their funds in full. It's possible to predict that due to this news story bitcoin will lower itself to its 2018 minimum, which is $3200.

Previously we took note of increasingly record-breaking numbers of bitcoin items set to be sold. This week one of the popular resources, Datalight, which is used to monitor social activity of crypto-enthusiasts in social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, group messaging app Telegram, informed us of reaching the lowest minimum value for the citation index in users' messages. The current value consists of little bit over 2% if you take the media activity at peak rates for top cryptocurrencies during first two months of 2018 as 100%. At first glance, this statistic doesn't hold much weight as it repeats the movements of the first cryptocurrency. However this simple information does tell us that many simple investors are disappointed in innovative assets specifically from the speculative point of view and the bubble created during 2017 is going to burst very soon. What we are seeing right now is sellers agony.

The idea of market reaching it's absolute lows is also supported by the online resource Diar citing the growth of operations using stablecoins. Not only this is the most popular and stable rate-wise currency Tether (currently ranked 5th in the market capitalization rating on Coinmarketcap) but also the great increase of trade volumes of such assets as TUSD, GUSD, USDC, and PAX. November results in comparison to their September counterparts are up to $2.3 billion USD which is more than 1032% increase.

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Когда становится все меньше надежд на рост биткоина и больше не предлагается новых оптимистических прогнозов на его взлет до небывалых высот, то настает лучший мо....

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