Bitcoin To The Moon, Tokens For Streaming, Confused Governments & Tezos Drama!
The OV October Brief
It seems as though “Wake me up when September ends” was written with Bitcoin hodlers in mind. The month has been phenomenal for Bitcoin whilst tokens and ICOs in general have taken a slump. We cover more on this, regulatory actions and interesting tokens to watch out for in the month’s brief.
This is a summary of our newsletter — sign up — to receive awesome briefs on what’s going on in the industry every morning!
Interesting Tokens Of The Month
Disclaimer : Tokens sales in the industry currently constitute broken code, founder in-fights and fake advisory. None of these are buy recommendations from Outlier Ventures or constitute investment advice.
Token sales have taken some hard hitting with fork related uncertainties and Bitcoin’s never ending bull rally pushing investors to exchange tokens for holding Satoshi’s currency. An increasing number of token sales are finding it difficult to reach their caps and tokens that are actively trading have left traders disappointed. 💀
- Stream
San Francisco based Stream is all set to take a shot at reinventing content streaming with tokens. The start-up has raised $5 million from investors including Pantera Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Coinfund and Zhenfund in a pre-sale. The pitch of the product is that content creators will be able to settle and receive their payments in a fraction of the time existing solutions like Youtube takes. As token based incentives increase & a more significant share of revenue is passed on to content creators, the system will be able to church out videos that compete against mainstream production houses. The streaming platform will compete with the likes of Twitch and Youtube Gaming — systems that currently offer tipping and donation models for sIt is to be noted, streamers. The platform does not currently make the content itself “distributed” but rather emphasizes on payments and licenses. While commendable, it is to be noted that this is not the first time a token claims to do so. Steem is one of the very few token oriented platforms that has managed to survive and reach critical mass to date.The whole affair left me wondering why a separate token was needed existing token-based payments would have been just as functional. - Matryx
Long before Alexander Graham Bell filed his patent for the telephone, an Italian mechanical genius, Antonio Meucci is believed to have laid down a framework for long distance communication. There were no blockchains back then for the inventor to lay claim to glory for the progress telephone lines brought to mankind. California based Matryx aims to solve this and problems associated with research by combining blockchains and VR. The start-up claims to “decentralise” research from occurring in silos and allows individuals to reward bounties for finding relevant solutions to problems. Instead of having a few researchers from very niche backgrounds look at a problem, their solution allows start-ups, academia and enterprises to seek assistance from a global community of multi-talented individuals who could look at the same problem through different angles. *cough* Medici Effect *Cough* Those working on a problem could have their contributions recorded on a blockchain and be rewarded in real time. It could be however argued that the project simply slaps a hackathon model to a blockchain. Will be interesting to notice how the platform grabs users and attains critical traction in the months to come. 🤔Catch up more on the project from their white paper here. - Metronome
Jeff Garzik, founder of Chicago based Bloq has announced that the start-up will soon be issuing a token named Metronome shortly. Bloq provides enterprise-grade blockchains that are cross-compatible across multiple blockchains. Aimed for launch in the first week of December, the token sale would involve a sale of 10 million tokens of which 2 million are pre-allocated to the developers. The purchase model would follow a reverse auction model where in late entrants would receive tokens at a lower price (??) . Metronome’s site claims that portability, reliability and governance would be the unique service propositions of the token. The network is anticipated to see little to no interference from the founder and remain completely decentralized. Given Jeff Garzik’s controversial stances for Bitcoin scaling, it would be interesting to see how the sales proceed. Catch up more details on the token sale here.
Government Regulations
As always, tussle continues between government regulations and distributed tokens. One stands for control, the other knocks on the door with disruption.
Notable over the month are Singapore, Vietnam & Russia’s stances on blockchains. Between the three, we receive an accurate depiction of how governments are approaching the sector.
- Vietnam Issues A Blanket Ban 😞😥😭
The state bank of Vietnam has (seemingly) issued guidelines on the use of cryptocurrencies within national boundaries. The document states that anyone using cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin) for payments could be liable to pay a fee of upto $9000 — roughly 60 times the average salary in Vietnam. The hostile stance could be an attempt to eradicate attempts of tax evasion by individuals within the national border. Earlier this year Nigeria had issued a ban on the utility of cryptocurrencies within the region. With dwindling local supplies and ever increasing demand, the same bumped up the price of Bitcoin in the region to a premium of upto 70%! Part of the struggle developing economies face with regards to enforcing cryptocurrency related regulations is the lack of skilled personnel required to enforce laws. Between corruption and pseudonymous nature of tokens, governments perhaps choose to just shut doors to any development in the space within their jurisdiction.
2. Singapore Sees No Threat. 😕😒😐
Ravi Menon, Chief of Singapore’s central bank recently stated that the nation will not be issuing stringent regulations around cryptocurrencies itself. Their approach would be to stay watchful of the developments in the ecosystem whilst providing a sandbox for fintech start-ups to innovate and grow. The chief further added “ “It is a known fact that cryptocurrencies are quite often abused for illicit financing purposes. And so we do want to have anti money laundering controls, countering the financing of terrorism controls in place. So those requirements apply to activity around cryptocurrency rather than the cryptocurrency itself.” Considering the fact that the nation has emerged a leader for trade and finance, it has a robust environment to tackle money laundering and terrorist funding. This allows Singapore to take a relatively relaxed stance while enabling an increasing number of tokens to set shop in the region. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) had issued a notice in August 2017, mentioning the threats involved in investing into tokens to retail investors.
3. Russia Wants Its Own Token!! 😮😳😱
An outlier in the regulatory fiasco is Russia. With initiatives ranging from using a blockchain to record land registry to wanting to issue a state backed “Crypto Ruble”, the nation seems to be going all in on blockchains. More recently, Putin decided to clarify regulatory structures around cryptocurrencies and ICOs. The model involves permitting fintech start-ups in the region to raise funds through token sales in a sandbox environment. It is to be noted that the enthusiasm from Russia is not for public, distributed ledgers. The bulk of their interest is on permissioned, private ledgers that would enable them to enforce authoritarianism. Consider the land registry on blockchains initiative. Given the fact that the land registry is being used to track records in some of the costliest regions for real estate, it can be hypothesized that the move is intended at tracking down land-related tax evasions in the future. The state backed token ? That thing will have a 13% tax on any gains booked and odds are high the government will enforce strict exchange rules on it. Perhaps, this is an interesting approach by the Russian government to circumvent national embargos set on the nation
Psst.. Watch out for the release of our government regulations tracker in the coming week. We cover ICO, Blockchain & Bitcoin regulations to create a singular index in it. Sign up for our newsletter here for early access.
Blockchains
1. Bitcoin
Jamie Dimon might consider Bitcoin traders stupid and the world might wait upon flippening to occur but it seems as though Satoshi’s creation is all set to break through $7000 as of writing this. Between announcements of the world’s largest derivatives provider listing Bitcoin’s futures and the opportunity to receive free tokens from Bitcoin Gold, the price of Bitcoin has surged over $3000 over the last month alone. There are a number of reasons for this. To begin with, China’s 19th Congress ended with no clear regulatory stances on cryptocurrencies. Markets have strong reasons to believe Chinese exchanges will be back in the foray soon. Things took a downturn when people anticipated Amazon to soon list Bitcoins as a payment method and disappointed them through their earnings call for Q3. Things seem a little euphoric for the moment with investors expecting $10,000 for a Bitcoin by the end of the year. Will it hit there ? Who knows. For moment, we wait and hodl.
2. Tezos
However, all is not rosy and sweet in the land of the tokens. In what seems like a nightmare, Tezos has landed itself in some hot water over the past month with founders wanting to oust the Tezos foundation head for more control. They claim that the head of the foundation had been abusing his position for personal gain. Kathleen Breitman, a co-founder of the token said “ [He] has acted as a roadblock to the mission of the Foundation — to launch the Tezos network and support the Tezos ecosystem. Johann consistently failed to meet deadlines, was unwilling to hold or attend council meetings, and failed to hire employees to help launch the network or pay people he committed to paying, and was constantly unavailable to handle foundation matters…” in regards to the head of the foundation. We can only hope that $232 Million would suffice for the leadership to find peace and settle things as the prices of the token tumble to a harsh discount of 50% off. Catch up more on the tussle here.
That’s all for the month. We’ll see you next month with more updates on tokens, blockchains and governments.Ciao!
