China and US Take Opposing Views on Crypto

China’s and US’s views on crypto differ. China announced the latest round of regulations to stem the popularity of crypto within its borders. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US gave a surprisingly positive opinion of cryptocurrencies and DLTs (Distributed Ledger Technologies).

China has been leading the war on crypto by being the first country to ban domestic virtual currency exchanges last summer. A ban on ICOs followed closely and then recently withdrawing financial support from miners happened. All measures have largely failed to stop Chinese people from continuing to invest in virtual currencies and related technologies. So now China is planning to put up what has been termed The Great Firewall of China.

The idea behind this digital border is to prevent access from within China to and from any platform that would facilitate trading in cryptocurrencies. Not unlike Facebook, China has also purged its state-owned social media and search engines of all mentions of cryptocurrencies and ICO advertising.

In the meantime J. Christopher Giancarlo, chairman and witness of the CFTC, expressed optimism towards Blockchain/DLTs. He did this in his testimony to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. He compared them to the development of the Internet.

“This simple approach is well-recognized as the enlightened regulatory underpinning of the Internet that brought about such profound changes to human society. During the almost 20 years of “do no harm” regulation, a massive amount of investment was made in the Internet’s infrastructure. It yielded a rapid expansion in access that supported swift deployment and mass adoption of Internet-based technologies. Internet-based innovations have revolutionized nearly every aspect of American life, from telecommunications to commerce, transportation and research and development. [“Do] no harm” was unquestionably the right approach to development of the Internet. Similarly, I believe that “do no harm” is the right overarching approach for distributed ledger technology.“

He hinted at additional regulations during his testimony. But he generally promoted them as ways to enhance the safety and security for investors and preventing scams (such as unregulated ICOs) as opposed to curbing the progress of crypto technology itself.

Here’s a flavour of what the testimony looked like.

Even our favourite term HODL got an honorable mention.

Crypto is the first truly global decentralized technology. It is redefining the world as we know it as it carves its own place in this world. We are still in the early days of its development. But the outlook for adoption by most governments of the world is definitely improving.

Unfortunately the totalitarian regimes, which want to cling on to their power will resist this change the hardest. But at least the more liberal countries of the world are showing definite signs of acceptance. America is the world’s superpower. It will play a very important role here, so it’s great to see them giving crypto a stamp of approval.