Cryptocurrency News - Jan 24th

Today in my cryptocurrency news update, South Korea once again made headlines as they fined multiple cryptocurrency exchanges due to improper data storage protection. The government released in a statement that they had fined 8 separate exchanges totaling around $130,000 because of their misdoings. This is a good sign for cryptos around the world as the general unregulated markets are becoming a safer place to trade as more and more regulations are being instilled to ensure consumers and individuals rights and money is protected.

The investigation that resulted in these hefty fines brought to light that many of these exchanges were not deleting data from users over a year old who had stopped trading as well as some exchanges storing their data in foreign countries. While the fines are not that significant for these individual exchanges, this comes a day after the government imposed stricter regulations on the crypto markets by stopping anonymous trading of cryptocurrency. I do not feel as though these moves by the Korean government will hurt the cryptocurrency but instead are helping it as they are ensuring safer practices for trading and adding more protection for individuals.

For the second part of the news today I came across an interesting article and interview with Bill Browder where he gave his opinion on cryptocurrency and what the upcoming future will most likely look like. It was a different outlook than I had heard before yet made a lot of sense and I could see future laws come into affect to support his theory. He stated,

"They will eventually regulate all cryptocurrencies in the same way you can’t take out more than $10,000 out of the bank without reporting it to the US Government, they’re not going to allow people to take a million worth of bitcoin and move it from Russia to Switzerland. That’s just not going to happen."

This grabbed my attention as I was reading because this is the exact thing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies was created for, the anonymity, as well as the seamless transfer of wealth between individuals regardless of their nationality or location around the world. I do not see how they would make laws to enforce this as the decentralized nature of the currency makes it difficult for one entity to control the markets. Yet I would not be surprised to see something in the future be imposed for this very reason.

It is interesting to note how many people whether high up in governments or businesses make statements to hurt the cryptocurrency movement and follow the same basic narrative since the beginning. We need to stop Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies because they allow for money laundering and other illicit services. I have heard this issue brought up too many times to count and will most likely continue to hear this excuse as a reason cryptocurrency are not beneficial to society. However, my opinion on the matter is that money laundering will always be an issue no matter what type of monetary system we have in place. Just because our currency might shift from a paper fiat currency into a digitalized currency will not create this problem as it has been around for a long long time before the creation of cryptocurrencies. It will be interesting to see how many of these attacks cryptocurrency will have as it becomes more and more involved in our everyday society and if we will see an increase or decrease in public statements attacking the technology.