1. Nicolas Maduro forced Venezuela’s largest Bank to work with Petro
The President urged Banco de Venezuela to start processing transactions with the state cryptocurrency Petro in all its branches soon, in a new attempt to popularize the virtual currency created by his administration.
The statement was made at the event dedicated to the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the nationalization of the country’s largest Bank. The President also noted that “during the most brutal economic war,” Venezuela has strengthened its public and private banking system. The Republic has issued a cryptocurrency to “move to new forms of financing” and “overcome” the international economic blockade of the United States.
On June 19, this year, President Maduro announced that the Digital Bank of youth and students was allocated about 924 million bolivars (more than $ 92.5 million) to open a million crypto wallets Petro for use by young citizens.
However, the crypto asset which, according to the Venezuelan government, has a large turnover in the digital currency market was declared “illegal” by the Parliament, according to the Constitution which prohibits “using the country’s reserves as guarantees.”
Also, on January 9, 2018, Donald Trump’s Cabinet published a ban on “all transactions” with any digital currency issued by or on behalf of the Venezuelan government.
2. Tether launches USDT for another $ 100 million
Tether has released another $100 million in USDT. All tokens were mined on the Ethereum blockchain and have already been sent to the main tether wallet. This news appeared shortly before the weekend, which is the period of the most active trading.
This is not the first time when Tether releases additional batches of USDT. In April, the company issued a USDT worth $ 300 million.
There is much speculation about this. They appeared because of the scandalous and controversial history of the company. Tether was charged with market manipulation back in 2017 when the price of bitcoin rose to $ 20,000. It seems that such fears are back again and there are those who believe that it is Tether that fuels the price increase in 2019.
Of course, this theory has its opponents. For example, the General Director of the Kraken exchange believes that the latest price increase is due to the growing demand for cryptocurrencies, not the Tether USDT seal.
3. Abra CEO: The US Constitution protects Bitcoin
The US government can’t ban Bitcoin because the cryptocurrency is protected by the U.S. Constitution implying freedom of expression, said the CEO of cryptocurrency company Abra Bill Barhydt.
The conference Bitcoin 2019 in San Francisco Barhydt explained that Bitcoin is a computer code, and the code is also a part of the word. Under the first amendment, freedom of speech is a constitutionally protected civil right. Authoritarian governments of China and India may ban Bitcoin, but this will not work in the US.
“There are rare talks about Bitcoin in the context of freedom of speech. However, freedom of speech must be protected as a human right throughout the world. When is Congress going to appoint the hearing where we can discuss the protection of human rights when working with this technology?” he said.
Barhydt has also commented on the recent call by the U.S. Congress to suspend the development of cryptocurrency project of Facebook. Abra CEO noted that Libra is more centralized than Bitcoin, which is why the authorities can find specific tools to pressure its developers.
