Bitcoin pulse, guides and news: 07/24/20

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Crypto Exchange Data Shows Traders Long After Bitcoin Price Breaks $9.6K (current BTC/USD price is $9,562.54)

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Crypto Exchange Data Shows Traders Long After Bitcoin Price Breaks $9.6K

Binance Customer Service Number 𝐈𝟖𝟕𝟕𝟖𝟒𝟔𝟐𝟖𝟏𝟕| Binance Usa Support Number

Binance usa Customer Care 𝐈𝟖𝟕𝟕*𝟖𝟒𝟔*𝟐𝟖𝟏𝟕| Customer Service Phone Number

To kick off ConsenSys' Ethereal Summit on Thursday, Unchained Podcast host Laura Shin held a cozy fireside chat with Zhao who, to mark the occasion, was wearing a personalized football shirt emblazoned with the Binance support number 1844*907*0583 brand. 1844*907*0583

Scheduled for 45 minutes, Zhao spent most of it explaining how libra and China's digital yuan were unlikely to be competitors to existing stablecoin providers; how Binance support number 1800-561-8025's smart chain wouldn't tread on Ethereum's toes – "that depends on the definition of competing," he said – and how Binance support number 1844*907*0583had an incentive to keep its newly acquired CoinMarketCap independent from the exchange.

There were only five minutes left on the clock. Zhao was looking confident; he had just batted away a thorny question about an ongoing lawsuit. It was looking like the home stretch.

Then it hit. Shin asked the one question Zhao really didn't want to have to answer, but many want to know: Where is Binance support number 1844*907*0583 headquarters?

This seemingly simple question is actually more complex. Until February, Binance support number 1844*907*0583 was considered to be based in Malta. That changed when the island European nation announced that, no, Binance support number 1844*907*0583 is not under its jurisdiction. Since then Binance support number 1844*907*0583 has not said just where, exactly, it is now headquartered.

Little wonder that when asked Zhao reddened; he stammered. He looked off-camera, possibly to an aide. "Well, I think what this is is the beauty of the blockchain, right, so you don't have to ... like where's the Bitcoin office, because Bitcoin doesn't have an office," he said.

The line trailed off, then inspiration hit. "What kind of horse is a car?" Zhao asked. Binance support number 1844*907*0583 has loads of offices, he continued, with staff in 50 countries. It was a new type of organization that doesn't need registered bank accounts and postal addresses.

"Wherever I sit, is going to be the Binance support number 1844*907*0583 office. Wherever I need somebody, is going to be the Binance support number 1844*907*0583 office," he said.

Zhao may have been hoping the host would move onto something easier. But Shin wasn't finished: "But even to do things like to handle, you know, taxes for your employees, like, I think you need a registered business entity, so like why are you obfuscating it, why not just be open about it like, you know, the headquarters is registered in this place, why not just say that?"

Zhao glanced away again, possibly at the person behind the camera. Their program had less than two minutes remaining. "It's not that we don't want to admit it, it's not that we want to obfuscate it or we want to kind of hide it. We're not hiding, we're in the open," he said.

Shin interjected: "What are you saying that you're already some kind of DAO [decentralized autonomous organization]? I mean what are you saying? Because it's not the old way [having a headquarters], it's actually the current way ... I actually don't know what you are or what you're claiming to be."

Zhao said Binance support number 1844*907*0583 isn't a traditional company, more a large team of people "that works together for a common goal." He added: "To be honest, if we classified as a DAO, then there's going to be a lot of debate about why we're not a DAO. So I don't want to go there, either."

"I mean nobody would call you guys a DAO," Shin said, likely disappointed that this wasn't the interview where Zhao made his big reveal.

Time was up. For an easy question to close, Shin asked where Zhao was working from during the coronavirus pandemic.

"I'm in Asia," Zhao said. The blank white wall behind him didn't provide any clues about where in Asia he might be. Shin asked if he could say which country – after all, it's the Earth's largest continent.

"I prefer not to disclose that. I think that's my own privacy," he cut in, ending the interview.

It was a provocative way to start the biggest cryptocurrency and blockchain event of the year.

In the opening session of Consensus: Distributed this week, Lawrence Summers was asked by my co-host Naomi Brockwell about protecting people’s privacy once currencies go digital. His answer: “I think the problems we have now with money involve too much privacy.”

President Clinton’s former Treasury secretary, now President Emeritus at Harvard, referenced the 500-euro note, which bore the nickname “The Bin Laden,” to argue the un-traceability of cash empowers wealthy criminals to finance themselves. “Of all the important freedoms,” he continued, “the ability to possess, transfer and do business with multi-million dollar sums of money anonymously seems to me to be one of the least important.” Summers ended the segment by saying that “if I have provoked others, I will have served my purpose.”

You’re reading Money Reimagined, a weekly look at the technological, economic and social events and trends that are redefining our relationship with money and transforming the global financial system. You can subscribe to this and all of CoinDesk’s newsletters here.

That he did. Among the more than 20,000 registered for the weeklong virtual experience was a large contingent of libertarian-minded folks who see state-backed monitoring of their money as an affront to their property rights.

But with due respect to a man who has had prodigious influence on international economic policymaking, it’s not wealthy bitcoiners for whom privacy matters. It matters for all humanity and, most importantly, for the poor.

Now, as the world grapples with how to collect and disseminate public health information in a way that both saves lives and preserves civil liberties, the principle of privacy deserves to be elevated in importance.

Just this week, the U.S. Senate voted to extend the 9/11-era Patriot Act and failed to pass a proposed amendment to prevent the Federal Bureau of Investigation from monitoring our online browsing without a warrant. Meanwhile, our heightened dependence on online social connections during COVID-19 isolation has further empowered a handful of internet platforms that are incorporating troves of our personal data into sophisticated predictive behavior models. This process of hidden control is happening right now, not in some future "Westworld"-like existence.

Digital currencies will only worsen this situation. If they are added to this comprehensive surveillance infrastructure, it could well spell the end of the civil liberties that underpin Western civilization.

Yes, freedom matters

Please don’t read this, Secretary Summers, as some privileged anti-taxation take or a self-interested what’s-mine-is-mine demand that “the government stay away from my money.”

Money is just the instrument here. What matters is whether our transactions, our exchanges of goods and services and the source of our economic and social value, should be monitored and manipulated by government and corporate owners of centralized databases. It’s why critics of China’s digital currency plans rightly worry about a “panopticon” and why, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, there was an initial backlash against Facebook launching its libra currency.

Writers such as Shoshana Zuboff and Jared Lanier have passionately argued that our subservience to the hidden algorithms of what I like to call “GoogAzonBook” is diminishing our free will. Resisting that is important, not just to preserve the ideal of “the self” but also to protect the very functioning of society.

Markets, for one, are pointless without free will. In optimizing resource allocation, they presume autonomy among those who make up the market. Free will, which I’ll define as the ability to lawfully transact on my own terms without knowingly or unknowingly acting in someone else’s interests to my detriment, is a bedrock of market democracies. Without a sufficient right to privacy, it disintegrates – and in the digital age, that can happen very rapidly.

Also, as I’ve argued elsewhere, losing privacy undermines the fungibility of money. Each digital dollar should be substitutable for another. If our transactions carry a history and authorities can target specific notes or tokens for seizure because of their past involvement in illicit activity, then some dollars become less valuable than other dollars.

The excluded

But to fully comprehend the harm done by encroachments into financial privacy, look to the world’s poor.

An estimated 1.7 billion adults are denied a bank account because they can’t furnish the information that banks’ anti-money laundering (AML) officers need, either because their government’s identity infrastructure is untrusted or because of the danger to them of furnishing such information to kleptocratic regimes. Unable to let banks monitor them, they’re excluded from the global economy’s dominant payment and savings system – victims of a system that prioritizes surveillance over privacy.

Misplaced priorities also contribute to the “derisking” problem faced by Caribbean and Latin American countries, where investment inflows have slowed and financial costs have risen in the past decade. America’s gatekeeping correspondent banks, fearful of heavy fines like the one imposed on HSBC for its involvement in a money laundering scandal, have raised the bar on the kind of personal information that regional banks must obtain from their local clients.

And where’s the payoff? Despite this surveillance system, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that between $800 billion and $2 trillion, or 2%-5% of global gross domestic product, is laundered annually worldwide. The Panama Papers case shows how the rich and powerful easily use lawyers, shell companies, tax havens and transaction obfuscation to get around surveillance. The poor are just excluded from the system.

Caring about privacy

Solutions are coming that wouldn’t require abandoning law enforcement efforts. Self-sovereign identity models and zero-knowledge proofs, for example, grant control over data to the individuals who generate it, allowing them to provide sufficient proof of a clean record without revealing sensitive personal information. But such innovations aren’t getting nearly enough attention.

Few officials inside developed country regulatory agencies seem to acknowledge the cost of cutting off 1.7 billion poor from the financial system. Yet, their actions foster poverty and create fertile conditions for terrorism and drug-running, the very crimes they seek to contain. The reaction to evidence of persistent money laundering is nearly always to make bank secrecy laws even more demanding. Exhibit A: Europe’s new AML 5 directive.

To be sure, in the Consensus discussion that followed the Summers interview, it was pleasing to hear another former U.S. official take a more accommodative view of privacy. Former Commodities and Futures Trading Commission Chairman Christopher Giancarlo said that “getting the privacy balance right” is a “design imperative” for the digital dollar concept he is actively promoting.

But to hold both governments and corporations to account on that design, we need an aware, informed public that recognizes the risks of ceding their civil liberties to governments or to GoogAzonBook.

Let’s talk about this, people.

A missing asterisk

Control for all variables. At the end of the day, the dollar’s standing as the world’s reserve currency ultimately comes down to how much the rest of the world trusts the United States to continue its de facto leadership of the world economy. In the past, that assessment was based on how well the U.S. militarily or otherwise dealt with human- and state-led threats to international commerce such as Soviet expansionism or terrorism. But in the COVID-19 era only one thing matters: how well it is leading the fight against the pandemic.

So if you’ve already seen the charts below and you’re wondering what they’re doing in a newsletter about the battle for the future of money, that’s why. They were inspired by a staged White House lawn photo-op Tuesday, where President Trump was flanked by a huge banner that dealt quite literally with a question of American leadership. It read, “America Leads the World in Testing.” That’s a claim that’s technically correct, but one that surely demands a big red asterisk. When you’re the third-largest country by population – not to mention the richest – having the highest number of tests is not itself much of an achievement. The claim demands a per capita adjustment. Here’s how things look, first in absolute terms, then adjusted for tests per million inhabitants.

Binance support number 1844*907*0583 has frozen funds linked to Upbit’s prior $50 million data breach after the hackers tried to liquidate a part of the gains. In a recent tweet, Whale Alert warned Binance support number 1844*907*0583 that a transaction of 137 ETH (about $28,000) had moved from an address linked to the Upbit hacker group to its wallets.

Less than an hour after the transaction was flagged, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance support number 1844*907*0583 announced that the exchange had frozen the funds. He also added that Binance support number 1844*907*0583 is getting in touch with Upbit to investigate the transaction. In November 2019, Upbit suffered an attack in which hackers stole 342,000 ETH, accounting for approximately $50 million. The hackers managed to take the funds by transferring the ETH from Upbit’s hot wallet to an anonymous crypto address.

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Binance Customer Care Number 𝐈𝟖𝟕𝟕𝟖𝟒𝟔𝟐𝟖𝟏𝟕| Binance Usa Support Number

Binance usa Customer Care 𝐈𝟖𝟕𝟕*𝟖𝟒𝟔*𝟐𝟖𝟏𝟕| Customer Service Phone Number

There were only five minutes left on the clock. Zhao was looking confident; he had just batted away a thorny question about an ongoing lawsuit. It was looking like the home stretch.

Then it hit. Shin asked the one question Zhao really didn't want to have to answer, but many want to know: Where is Binance support number 1844*907*0583 headquarters?

"I mean nobody would call you guys a DAO," Shin said, likely disappointed that this wasn't the interview where Zhao made his big reveal.

Time was up. For an easy question to close, Shin asked where Zhao was working from during the coronavirus pandemic.

"I prefer not to disclose that. I think that's my own privacy," he cut in, ending the interview.

It was a provocative way to start the biggest cryptocurrency and blockchain event of the year.

Yes, freedom matters

Please don’t read this, Secretary Summers, as some privileged anti-taxation take or a self-interested what’s-mine-is-mine demand that “the government stay away from my money.”

The excluded

But to fully comprehend the harm done by encroachments into financial privacy, look to the world’s poor.

Caring about privacy

But to hold both governments and corporations to account on that design, we need an aware, informed public that recognizes the risks of ceding their civil liberties to governments or to GoogAzonBook.

Let’s talk about this, people.

A missing asterisk

- By Browser Binance DESKTOP GOLD And Check If it is Not working Antivirus

- Optimized Technical Issues Performance And Increase the Productivity

- Government mandates for the usage of Antivirus Server in different Countires

- Lack of information on Antivirus they have issues On it

- Low Cost by phone number required for the execution Process

- Growing demands on Installation .We Support them.

- We Create Co-ordinate relation Among The customer and we.

- We Give more importance to the customer Problem for Resolution

Binance Customer Care 𝐈𝟖𝟕𝟕𝟖𝟒𝟔𝟐𝟖𝟏𝟕| Binance Usa Support Number

Binance usa Customer Care 𝐈𝟖𝟕𝟕*𝟖𝟒𝟔*𝟐𝟖𝟏𝟕| Customer Service Phone Number

There were only five minutes left on the clock. Zhao was looking confident; he had just batted away a thorny question about an ongoing lawsuit. It was looking like the home stretch.

Then it hit. Shin asked the one question Zhao really didn't want to have to answer, but many want to know: Where is Binance support number 1844*907*0583 headquarters?

"I mean nobody would call you guys a DAO," Shin said, likely disappointed that this wasn't the interview where Zhao made his big reveal.

Time was up. For an easy question to close, Shin asked where Zhao was working from during the coronavirus pandemic.

"I prefer not to disclose that. I think that's my own privacy," he cut in, ending the interview.

It was a provocative way to start the biggest cryptocurrency and blockchain event of the year.

Yes, freedom matters

Please don’t read this, Secretary Summers, as some privileged anti-taxation take or a self-interested what’s-mine-is-mine demand that “the government stay away from my money.”

The excluded

But to fully comprehend the harm done by encroachments into financial privacy, look to the world’s poor.

Caring about privacy

But to hold both governments and corporations to account on that design, we need an aware, informed public that recognizes the risks of ceding their civil liberties to governments or to GoogAzonBook.

Let’s talk about this, people.

A missing asterisk

- By Browser Binance DESKTOP GOLD And Check If it is Not working Antivirus

- Optimized Technical Issues Performance And Increase the Productivity

- Government mandates for the usage of Antivirus Server in different Countires

- Lack of information on Antivirus they have issues On it

- Low Cost by phone number required for the execution Process

- Growing demands on Installation .We Support them.

- We Create Co-ordinate relation Among The customer and we.

- We Give more importance to the customer Problem for Resolution

Binance Customer Service 𝐈𝟖𝟕𝟕𝟖𝟒𝟔𝟐𝟖𝟏𝟕| Binance Usa Support Number

Binance usa Customer Care 𝐈𝟖𝟕𝟕*𝟖𝟒𝟔*𝟐𝟖𝟏𝟕| Customer Service Phone Number

There were only five minutes left on the clock. Zhao was looking confident; he had just batted away a thorny question about an ongoing lawsuit. It was looking like the home stretch.

Then it hit. Shin asked the one question Zhao really didn't want to have to answer, but many want to know: Where is Binance support number 1844*907*0583 headquarters?

"I mean nobody would call you guys a DAO," Shin said, likely disappointed that this wasn't the interview where Zhao made his big reveal.

Time was up. For an easy question to close, Shin asked where Zhao was working from during the coronavirus pandemic.

"I prefer not to disclose that. I think that's my own privacy," he cut in, ending the interview.

It was a provocative way to start the biggest cryptocurrency and blockchain event of the year.

Yes, freedom matters

Please don’t read this, Secretary Summers, as some privileged anti-taxation take or a self-interested what’s-mine-is-mine demand that “the government stay away from my money.”

The excluded

But to fully comprehend the harm done by encroachments into financial privacy, look to the world’s poor.

Caring about privacy

But to hold both governments and corporations to account on that design, we need an aware, informed public that recognizes the risks of ceding their civil liberties to governments or to GoogAzonBook.

Let’s talk about this, people.

A missing asterisk

- By Browser Binance DESKTOP GOLD And Check If it is Not working Antivirus

- Optimized Technical Issues Performance And Increase the Productivity

- Government mandates for the usage of Antivirus Server in different Countires

- Lack of information on Antivirus they have issues On it

- Low Cost by phone number required for the execution Process

- Growing demands on Installation .We Support them.

- We Create Co-ordinate relation Among The customer and we.

- We Give more importance to the customer Problem for Resolution

Binance Customer Support 𝐈𝟖𝟕𝟕𝟖𝟒𝟔𝟐𝟖𝟏𝟕| Binance Usa Support Number

Binance usa Customer Care 𝐈𝟖𝟕𝟕*𝟖𝟒𝟔*𝟐𝟖𝟏𝟕| Customer Service Phone Number

There were only five minutes left on the clock. Zhao was looking confident; he had just batted away a thorny question about an ongoing lawsuit. It was looking like the home stretch.

Then it hit. Shin asked the one question Zhao really didn't want to have to answer, but many want to know: Where is Binance support number 1844*907*0583 headquarters?

"I mean nobody would call you guys a DAO," Shin said, likely disappointed that this wasn't the interview where Zhao made his big reveal.

Time was up. For an easy question to close, Shin asked where Zhao was working from during the coronavirus pandemic.

"I prefer not to disclose that. I think that's my own privacy," he cut in, ending the interview.

It was a provocative way to start the biggest cryptocurrency and blockchain event of the year.

Yes, freedom matters

Please don’t read this, Secretary Summers, as some privileged anti-taxation take or a self-interested what’s-mine-is-mine demand that “the government stay away from my money.”

The excluded

But to fully comprehend the harm done by encroachments into financial privacy, look to the world’s poor.

Caring about privacy

But to hold both governments and corporations to account on that design, we need an aware, informed public that recognizes the risks of ceding their civil liberties to governments or to GoogAzonBook.

Let’s talk about this, people.

A missing asterisk

- By Browser Binance DESKTOP GOLD And Check If it is Not working Antivirus

- Optimized Technical Issues Performance And Increase the Productivity

- Government mandates for the usage of Antivirus Server in different Countires

- Lack of information on Antivirus they have issues On it

- Low Cost by phone number required for the execution Process

- Growing demands on Installation .We Support them.

- We Create Co-ordinate relation Among The customer and we.

- We Give more importance to the customer Problem for Resolution

Bitcoin option traders may want to tread lightly

Even though there were doubts about the Bitcoin market reacting to the global economic events, the recent COVID-19 pandemic aligned it more with the global market. However, the crypto market has remained in sync with the affairs in the crypto industry. This was witnessed on 22 July when the news about the US banks offering […]

NOT SURE IF A SCAM REMOTE JOB OFFER! (Global AMC Company)

A few days a got an e-mail from a global company Global AMC based in Texas https://global-amc.com/ that I didn't apply for. They said they "got my CV from the Indeed job portal", I had been using Indeed job portal but hadn't filled out the cv blanks on the Indeed webpage, I was always only sending CV to employers as PDFs. So it was just my name and e-mail there. Also, none of my previous work experience had anything to do with finances or handling money. I was a Visual Artist / Content Manager. So I was a bit surprised.

I clicked on the link they sent me and after signing up on their platform it gave a brief overview of what's the process like (good-looking website). They asked me to sign the job agreement already, which I did, and write my current address (Germany) and send photos of 2 documents, and then I could start my paid training already. All the work would be 9-6 pm remote work. A bit more than 2000€ per month.

I did check out their website for some background research too, and in the "about" page were gaps in the text where it should have been "location", "time period" etc, like a fill-in text template. Also, the same staff people + some more work in another company "ACE & Company" https://aceandcompany.com/ with a similar mission with headquarters in Geneva.

I googled: "Is Cryptocurrency legal in Germany?" = German cryptocurrency taxation: ether, IOTA and Co. Unlike the euro (considered fiat money), Bitcoins and other cryptographic currencies are not legal tender.

This all might be totally legit as it's a less than 50 employees company that's just starting out, but I've never worked on such a profession or managed any transactions so I would be super thankful for any insights on the topic!

This is the e-mail copy paste:

"Dear ***,

We received your CV from the INDEED site and you are suitable for the position as an Account Manager.
Thank you for your interest in the position of Account Manager. Below is the link to the company site where you would have to register and also get access to all the information regarding the job position. I am available to guide you through the process and answer all questions.
https://cp.global-amc.com/
Also during registration, please select Account Manager for the vacancy option and *** as Manager

NB: This job offer is only open to candidates with European passport.

Below is the work Road map
1. register with Global AMC
2 register a payment system for working with crypto exchange
3 pass KYC verification
4 Open a bank Account through which you can make international transactions with the crypto exchange
5 register in the crypto exchange
6 get verified by KYC
7 start training with us / finish training
8 get connected with a client via our system
9 receive funds from a client
10 deposit crypto exchange
11 make a deal on cryptocurrency
12 send crypto currency directly to the client and get your commission
13 Get feedback from customer

The link to the general company site is below.
https://global-amc.com/
You can contact me on *** or via this email.
Thank you

Regards,***"

And some information from their portal:

"During the training a candidate will go through the following:

- A full cycle of working with cryptocurrency

- Creating payment portfolios for customers

- Passing checks in the main crypto exchangers

- Opening accounts in mobile banks

- Work with local banks

- Composing a report and preparation of a tax report

- Creating an order, processing application and withdrawing funds to the client"

Blockchain in the Public Sector: Webcast Insights

Link to our website: https://block.co/blockchain-in-the-public-sector-webcast-insights/

This article provides a summary of the insights provided during Block.co’s 4th Live Webcast on the topic of Digital Transformation Of The Public Sector & The Upcoming Legislation Of Blockchain Technology In Cyprus.

Adoption of Blockchain and other disruptive technologies has flourished particularly in smaller nations that represent interesting hubs where innovations are more easily tested and applied. With blockchain in Public Sector, we’ve already experienced the commitment of small countries like Switzerland, Malta, Singapore, and Cyprus more recently. In just a few years, the small island in the Mediterranean known for tourism and offshore bank accounts has become a desirable fintech jurisdiction for investors and global businesses, due to the vivid interest of the Cypriot government towards new technologies, blockchain and AI imprimis.

With a highly favorable tax environment and the financial incentives available, Cyprus is shining as a hotspot for blockchain businesses and entrepreneurs from all over the world. In 2018 a Declaration was signed by EU member states to promote blockchain in public sector use across its members. By that time, Cyprus had already expressed interest in the technology with a series of initiatives. Cyprus’s partnership with Singapore-based blockchain platform VeChain was sealed to push forward the development and adoption of the technology. In addition, the Cyprus Blockchain Association was created while the University of Nicosia was involved in the development of the technology by offering courses and Master’s degrees on blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and by also practically using blockchain technology to validate academic documentation through block.co.

The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) launched a blockchain innovation hub with other organizations and associations to support the development and implementation of technologies that can facilitate administrative operations and improve citizens relations with authorities. In 2019, Cyprus’ cabinet published its National Strategy on Distributed Ledger Technologies in order to provide a platform for both public sector and private initiatives employing blockchain applications. With such an exciting background in mind, Block.co arranged its fourth webcast that was held on Tuesday 21st July at the presence of prominent guests, who are all helping the government of Cyprus, develop and adopt the disruptive technologies in its administrative, economic and legal activities.

How are corporates, governments, and citizens impacted by the changes in legislation?

Hosted by brilliant Christiana Aristidou, a Technology Lawyer and Digital Transformation Specialist, Block.co along with Cyprus’s Deputy Minister for Research, Innovation & Digital Policy, Mr. Kyriacos Kokkinos, and international Blockchain experts Jeff Bandman and Steve Tendon joined forces in the webcast to discuss the enormous potential of Blockchain technology in both the public and private sectors.

https://preview.redd.it/xf6z1l9jhsc51.png?width=3622&format=png&auto=webp&s=028263148491640a8f4ada34a323e833fca1836d

The guests’ common path into blockchain was the early and skeptical discovery of Bitcoin followed by years of research and a more in-depth understanding of the technology which led them to embrace it in different ways.

Jeff became interested in the legal implications and the regulatory framework that would arise with the technology. His firm Bandman Advisors has recently been appointed by the Cyprus Government to draft its legislation on Blockchain & DLT.

Steve was a software engineer who moved to a management consulting role and had founded TameFlow when he learned about technologies like Ethereum and how its smart contracts could be used in governance. He became a consultant for Malta to help the country benefit from blockchain adoption and gave a major contribution to the drafting of Malta’s National Strategy on Blockchain.

The Deputy Minister, Mr. Kokkinos is the person responsible for the design and implementation of Cyprus’s Blockchain and DLT strategy:

“We want to convert the innovation researching tools into pillars for our economy to encourage more prosperity for our society. Blockchain and DLT are essential for digital transformation, a key player in a globalized economy. In June 2019, the Council of Ministers of Cyprus approved a strategy for DLT and blockchain, and part of my job is to facilitate the detailed implementation through both technical and legal perspectives. Jeff Bandman has worked to help with the legal, I help with the strategic side.”

The strategy document indicates that “The Republic of Cyprus, in line with the European and global trends of change and progress, strives to create the right environment for enterprises, companies, services, and investments by adopting innovative practices and procedures.”

“We’re all closely monitoring discussions at the EU level -continues the Deputy Minister- in order to meet regulatory standards and we’re considering them for our strategy. We’re working on achieving maximum compatibility with the EU legislation and encouraging all members to arrange a deployment of blockchain in all fields.”

Governments have come to realize they must provide all tools available and needed for digital transformation in the public sector, to ultimately best serve its business communities and citizens alike. The intricacies of bureaucracy speed up the need for new technologies, and in the pandemic era, access to digitalization is proving crucial to meet future challenges especially in areas where blockchain can help like healthcare, supply chain, and digital identity implementation. Jeff believes that blockchain can start by keeping consistency between democracy and trust, through the transparency that it can provide. “For example tracing the origin of funds and their allocation, will facilitate trust which is the basis of a distributed and decentralized environment”.

https://preview.redd.it/aguf1jiohsc51.png?width=3622&format=png&auto=webp&s=77f256b1435380fed223334ceb65104cef755626

According to Steve: “Blockchain can be interesting from different perspectives and I also believe trust is crucial. While we normally trust governments and authorities to manage most of our public and private life, with blockchain we have the chance to take it all back and shift to a sovereign approach. Starting with your own identity, with healthcare records, licenses, voting, and so forth, self-sovereignty will identify who you are, not a government. We’ve started building SOV, a stablecoin that will soon be legal tender, detached from a central bank but built on the chain and established by the algorithm. For the first time, this new monetary policy will remove the discretionary power of central banks, something that was not even conceivable before blockchain. The power is back to the people”.

With the first upcoming legislation in Cyprus, Christiana asked Jeff if he could share what this new law will involve, and what will be regulated.

“We’ve been working very hard on drafting and evaluating the different perspectives. Most efforts and resources are being dedicated to a definition and classification of the different digital assets, to the legal certainty around smart contracts, and to protect vulnerable consumers. From a business perspective, we’re still evaluating company laws, how blockchain can assist the full operational process, which criteria will help mainstream adoption of blockchain in Cyprus”.

The results of the 2019 strategy plan were supposed to be released in April but the Covid-19 crisis has delayed the works and they’re now expected in September this year. “The lesson we can learn from pioneer Malta -informs us Steve, who played a pivotal role in shaping Malta’s blockchain reputation- is to set up the right expectation and find a balance between the level of ambition and what is practical. Malta became a blockchain island because it made efforts to regulate the technology, but the challenge is to make regulation fair and accessible to everybody, the community, and the professionals so that innovation is encouraged at all times.”

What will the future hold for Cyprus? Will it be the new blockchain island?

“We have a promising technology -continues Steve Tendon- and collaboration between countries should be encouraged in terms of legislation and regulations, and the EU should take a more active role. It’s not a competition but a collaboration between Malta, Cyprus, and other geographies where a regulatory framework that promotes innovation should reflect and embrace the changes that new technologies bring to a globalized world.”

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