The European decision to relegate Bitcoin in its blockchain policy causes discomfort in the industry and in the community

Madrid.- Several points that appear in the draft Resolution of the European Parliament on distributed accounting technologies and blockchains, released yesterday exclusively by CriptoNoticias, have caused some discomfort among leading members of the industry and the Bitcoin community, for consider them imprudent and harmful for the development of the technology that has given rise to all the blockchains, and that is none other than Bitcoin.

The most controversial sections are those that refer to the ICO (Initial Currency Offer) and the consensus test mechanisms. With regard to ICOs, to which the European Parliament attributes great potential to finance innovation and accelerate the transfer of technology, urging the Commission to seek a framework for them, several sources consider that the Community body should have indicated in the document the clearly deceptive behavior of some of them, as well as the lack of legal protection of the investors who bet on this type of product.

On this aspect, Elizabeth Stark, CEO and co-founder of Lightning Labs, one of the companies that develops the protocol of the Lightning Network, which allows millions of transactions with bitcoins per second, at very low cost and almost instantaneously, considers that The draft of this proposal "is clearly biased against Bitcoin and towards ICOs". Stark, one of the most respected authorities in the Bitcoin universe for its constant contributions to the technology that supports it, told CriptoNoticias that:

I am planning to give an answer to this, explaining the merits of Bitcoin and the numerous problems that are created with the current model of ICOs. In general, the EU should look for a more balanced approach, one that is not influenced by one or more companies and that does not say which technologies should be used.

Regarding the Initial Currency Offer, a very reputable source of the blockchain industry, which prefers to remain anonymous, told this newspaper that "given the unique systemic and regulatory risks associated with cryptocurrency products, it is unusual for the European Parliament to adopt the cryptocurrencies and the companies that promote it, insofar as it has done so. This fact suggests a lack of knowledge among legislators about the scope of these risks "

On the proposal of the EU Parliament to extend the single passport to the investment schemes of the ICOs and to involve the credit apparatuses of the European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund in the development of the sector, the same source states that It seems imprudent that while "the rest of the developed world is cracking down on ICO schemes as financial fraud, the European Union takes the opposite approach." In this regard, he emphasizes that Europol has already begun to prioritize research in this space.

Another section that has generated controversy is the one that underlines that "consensus mechanisms based on" work test (PoW) "concepts (like the Bitcoin blockchain) are wasteful of energy and environmentally unsustainable. Alternative consensus mechanisms (for example, "participation test (PoS)" or "authority test") require less energy and are more desirable. "

About the writing of this section, Adrián Garelik, the founder and CEO of Flixxo from Buenos Aires, the decentralized 'YouTube' that raised more than five million dollars in an ICO launched at the end of last year, explains that "they are technologies that have not they have been validated yet and that they run the risk of having unknown attack vectors, on the other hand the "proof-of-work" of Bitcoin has not suffered any attack in the nine years of its validity. It is curious and remarkable that the concept of proof-of-authority, which stands out in the report, has been created by Gavin Wood, head of Parity, the wallet that suffered one of the biggest hacks in the history of cryptocurrencies. "

The draft of the European Parliament is dated to January 30 of this year, two days before the European Commission announced the launch of the Blockchain Observatory by ConsenSys.