European community push Ethereum

Dear Steemitians

The only European cryptocurrency magazine that has a certain reputation, Criptonoticias, has reported that the usual American magazines, such as Coindesk, CCN, Bitcoin News and comrades have been careful not to report.
According to the Spanish magazine, it seems in fact that the European Parliament, flaunting a presumed preference for the technology ethereum, is really making nervous the greatest exponents of the bitcoin community.
The subject of the dispute is a broad parliamentary proposal for a transformation of all the "key sectors of the economy and society" through blockchain technology.
This proposal, completely ignoring bitcoin, allows us to point out the blockchain of ethereum as the best choice in terms of energy sustainability, since, we know, the effort to undermine bitcoins is among the most expensive activities in the world and risks to dry up the reserves of an entire country.
As if this were not enough, these MPs have even allowed themselves to say that the ICO (cito): "have great potential to finance innovation and accelerate technology transfer in the blockchain", inviting the Commission to elaborate a framework for their safe and risk-free operation.
We know very well that almost all ICOs are made through the ethereum smart contract and therefore are considered one of the driving factors of this blockchain.
So for bitcoin supporters, to propose a regulation of ICOs with reasonableness and simplicity, without precede this proposal by the usual paranoid scenarios of millionaire scams, of gullible taken for the backs and of criminal associations hidden behind an innocent website, betraying certainly a partisan interest ... that is, the part of ethereum ... And you know what? Despite everything, maybe they're right, as I'll tell you in a moment ...
But let's go with order ...
The icing on the cake was the decision, taken just two days later by the Parliament, to entrust ConsenSys with the management of the Blockchain Observatory, which should produce the analyzes, proposals and knowledge necessary for the transformation of "all the key sectors of the society and the European economy "called for by the proposal we have just discussed.
Now, ConsenSys is that American company that manages contracts for the implementation of the ethereum network and that has as its motto "Harness the power of ethereum" (Harness the power of ethereum).
Needless to say, the bitcoin ones took it ...
I refer to the reading of the article by Criptonoticias for the details of the debate between the members of the bitcoin world and those of the European Parliament, guilty of lese majesty towards the most ancient (and currently the most useless) among the cryptocurrencies.
On my part, however, I would like to share with you some considerations that this episode has brought to my mind.
If you've read my previous articles, you know what my frame of reference is when I talk about politics applied to cryptocurrencies.
In this article you will find the complete outline, which can be summarized in two words:

1. The cryptocurrencies and the blockchain have an explosive technology behind them, comparable to the invention of steam or printing machines.
2. But this technology, for now, is not leading us to a better world where everyone shares peacefully the benefits of the innovations it produces. On the contrary, it is bringing fierce divisions among states, institutions, multinationals, destroying ancient privileges and monopolies to create others.

The episode that I told you is therefore only a piece of this general picture.
So let's try to merge the various points to find out what's behind it.
The main accusation by the bitcoin community regarding the parliamentary group that drafted that proposal was to have taken a partisan decision, preferring one technology rather than another, without having first compared it with all the alternatives available.
But those who know a little about the European Parliament and the Commission (and its citizens have had 40 years to do so) can not help but notice that this is their usual way of proceeding.
Usually, when a parliamentary group pushes to elaborate a shared proposal, which is then voted on and brought to the Commission to translate it into concrete directives for all the Member States, it has already done the preliminary work of comparison and evaluation.
Normally these proposals always establish a preferential solution already fixed, chosen among many available.
Whether it is the product of lobbying pressure or the result of careful analysis, it must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
Even the assignment of the Observatory for the Blockchain to a specific company, ConsenSys, seems to have been done with a regular tender (as reported to Criptonoticias by Eva Kaili, member of the Progressive Alliance of Social Democrats).
The question about ICOs is more interesting, because in the end it is from there that real money passes ...
The way in which this European parliamentary group evaluates and disseminates information on this innovative economic instrument externally betrays much more than the previous points.
ICOs are not a technological innovation, but an economic innovation.
Once a state allows this innovation to prosper in its territory, it must take into account the inevitable consequences (let us say, of the earthquake) that would cause the general economic structure.
The size of a medium ICO, in terms of money raised by the banning companies, is far higher than those of the major IPOs in human history.
This turnover must therefore be treated with caution.
So far, the only countries that have a law that regulates (and therefore legalises) the ICOs are Switzerland and Gibraltar (Spain will also soon).
Few rules are enough to make frauds completely impossible and to make the companies pay the right taxes as a contribution to the community (ICOs are nothing more than trivial auctions.) It is much more difficult to make the highway code).
The thing seems clearer if we compare it with what happens in the United States.
It is at least two years that the major US institutions, namely the SEC (Security and Exchange Commission, which oversees the Stock Exchange), the CFTC (Commodity futures trading Commission, the authority on derivatives) the Fed (Federal Reserve, the Central Bank) or the Congress, instead of regulating the ICOs, they say that it is necessary to regulate them, because they are an obscure and risky tool from which everyone should keep away.
Even the American magazines that deal with cryptocurrency news (the ones I mentioned at the beginning of the article) refer to every sneeze of the most obscure SEC or CFTC official who makes statements about the dangers of ICOs, about how dangerous they are for naive who participate and on the absolute need to regulate them (who knows when, but '...).
More than information, this is media terrorism, done to damage those parts of the world (Switzerland, Europe) that on the contrary have already or are seriously working to have a regulatory framework within which to enter these immense wealth without risk to the State and for investors.
That's why it's so important the way a state or an institution "talks" about ICOs.
As the bitcoin community rightly stated, the fact that the European Parliament (or at least its influential group) does NOT deal with defaming the ICOs with the excuse of wanting to regulate them, but is preparing to regulate them in an objective and scientific way, without ambiguity and hesitation, it certainly betrays a precise approach that this group would like to have all Member States adopt.
Going towards the same road practiced by Switzerland and Gibraltar, it is a precise economic choice with profound consequences. And using ethereum as an instrument of this choice is not a trivial matter.
Bitcoin fans therefore have every reason to be alarmed ...
For one thing, ICOs are a way for small start-ups to receive huge funding with a speed and ease that cheap web giants like Amazon, Google and Facebook did not have in their day.
Can you imagine what would happen in America if, in a few years, these giants faced real competitors (financed by ICO) for the first time, capable of losing their monopoly positions?
That's why America will continue to say that ICOs are a tool of the devil ...
The US also strongly support the their big companies. Not only in compliance with sentence "America first" of the current government, but above all for the fact that now Amazon, Google and Facebook allow to dominate data and information of at least half of the planet.
A strong source of funding like the ICO on the contrary would tend to shuffle the cards in the productive fabric of this country, endangering its uniformity (which in the American case is a matter of national security, for the reasons I just told you).
This is why, not only is there no interest in making the USA an ICO-friendly territory, but it tries to damage (with a careful media strategy) those areas of the developed world that are on the contrary going to take advantage of this potential economic bomb.
In this global war triggered by the advent of the blockchain, the media also play their part.
If you only listen to the American media bell (Coindesk, CCN, Bitcoin News, etc.) you might think that the advent of the ICO (and more generally of a productive-economic fabric based on ethereum) is opposed by governments (from all the governments).
But it's not like that. As usual, the way in which the different blockchains are adopted is very different between one area of the world and the other.
You can not afford to lose sight of the fate of ethereum in Europe, because a possible adoption at European level would be a leap forward in the economic cycle of this blockchain.
All the deep economic innovations have a phase in which two or three great monopolists emerge from the initial "primordial broth" that end up dominating innovation.
It happened with the computer "bubble" of the 90s, where the various Microsoft, Google, Facebook etc. they were left alone to drive the market while the other hundreds of companies that were there then failed.
In this "bubble" of the blockchain, however, we have not yet reached the monopolistic phase.
Every year hundreds of projects continue to be created, alongside the hundreds of ideas and achievements already present, but among these there are still few absolute winners ...
A possible affirmation of ethereum in such a vast territory as the European one could, on the contrary, trigger a monopolistic trend that would make a big difference, even at the level of quotation of the corresponding cryptocurrency.