[ad_1]
Bigatton Bigatton with the Bogus BitConnect scam pursued by ASIC
The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) in partnership with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of the Crown Prosecutors have charged John Bigatton, the Australian promoter of the infamous $ 2.6 billion BitConnect offering, of offenses related to violations of securities law.
On November 17, the ASIC announced the allegations against Mr. Bigatton as follows:
-
a management statement of an unregistered managed investment program, which carries a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison and / or a fine of $ 42,000;
-
a bill for providing unlicensed financial services on behalf of another person, which carries a maximum sentence of 2 years in prison and / or a $ 42,000 fine;
-
four counts for making a false or misleading declaration regarding market participation, with a maximum penalty for each charge of 10 years of imprisonment e. or a $ 945,000 fine
Furthermore, ASIC said that during the BitConnect seminars conducted by Bigatton, further misleading or false claims were made. The matter was listed today and was updated for a mention on February 2, 2021 at Downing Center Local Court, Sydney.
Does the real become digital or does the digital become real? The Brazilian CBDC
The ranks of countries seeking to issue their own central bank digital currency (CBDC) continue to grow with Brazilian Economy Minister Paulo Guedes, who confirmed earlier this year that Brazil will pursue a CBDC.
Minister Guedes released the statement November 5th during a ceremony celebrating the 100 millionth digital savings account opened at Caixa Economica Federal:
Now that the central bank is autonomous again, it is also surprising in the digital dimension: Pix, OpenBank, fintech and digital currency. Brazil will have its own digital currency. Brazil is ahead of many countries.
This follows Guedes’ comments 7 October 2020 regarding an initial public offering of the newly created digital bank of Caixa Economica Federal which should take place by April 2021.
Does digital become real?
Above 21 August 2020, Banco Central of Brazil announced that it has launched a study for the possible issue of a digital Brazilian Real. The overall objective of the study is to examine the improvement of commercial transactions between public and private entities, nationally and internationally, and to explore a potential model for a CBDC.
Roberto Campos Neto, the president of the Central Bank of Brazil, also pushed Brazil to revolutionize its currency through the introduction of Pix, a federal digital payment system. Roberto Neto noted:
Pix is very important because from now on we see the union of an instant, open and interoperable payment method with an open data system. Somewhere in the future they will find a coin that has yet to be perfected.
While the Central Bank hasn’t revealed how the digital version of the Brazilian Real will work, Campos Neto said it will go into circulation from 2022.
According to the statements of Banco Central, the digital real would be used mainly in foreign exchange operations, both nationally and internationally.
My conversations with central banks, with regulators, with a number of people in the field of cryptography, there is no doubt that digital currencies will increase in importance, having increasing functionality and increasing importance. CBDCs, from my point of view and from all my conversations, are a question of when and how they are completed, not if.
This comes after the recent ad by PayPal which will allow US account holders to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies and expansion into international markets by its Venmo Platform.
Dan Schulman said:
… [It will] enable customers to use cryptocurrencies as a funding tool to shop across all 28 million of our merchants. This solution will not involve any additional integration, volatility risk or incremental transaction fees for consumers or traders and will fundamentally enhance the usefulness of cryptocurrencies. This is just the beginning of the opportunities we see as we work hand-in-hand with regulators to accept new forms of digital currencies.
Given their huge network of commerce merchants, new digital infrastructure and range of currencies available, PayPal will dramatically increase the usefulness of digital currencies internationally, even without allowing tokens to be withdrawn from their wallets.
Uncle Sam seizes a billion Bitcoins
Interest has recently grown in the bitcoin community when a digital wallet containing about $ 1 billion worth of stolen bitcoin – thought to come from the infamous dark web drug market Silk Road – was emptied by an anonymous individual. But, in an encouraging turn of events, the Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed that the money was seized by the US government as part of a civil confiscation.
What will happen?
Despite the mistaken belief that bitcoin is untraceable, this 10-digit seizure of funds demonstrates the potential for law enforcement to track down owners of illicit cryptocurrency stocks. According to Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson:
We have already seen an increase in law enforcement buying blockchain analytics tools.
The US federal government generally sells properties obtained through civil confiscation, and as bitcoin increases in value, a tidy sum should flow into the DOJ’s coffers. This type of seizure and the continued investment by law enforcement in monitoring the blockchain (including the recent reward offered for Monero privacy coin monitoring) is likely to only increase when criminals learn that an immutable record of transactions creates a trail of immutable evidence.
Punishing a ponzi scheme that used bitcoin as a decoy
In an action promoted by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the United States District Court for the District of Colorado entered a judgement against the defendants Venture Capital Investments LLC (VCI) and its principal for the fraudulent request and misappropriation of funds from clients in a digital asset scheme. There were no digital assets purchased at all, to remind you that all that glitters may not be bitcoin.
Defendants found participants in the pool via social media, emails, webinars, and face-to-face meetings, eventually demanding $ 535,829 from attendees and embezzling $ 450,302 of it for personal use. In a classic ponzi move, payments were made to existing pool members from the original pool of funds, so it looked like the scheme / scam was profitable.
The judgement requires the defendants to return $ 450,302 to the investors, the money received being $ 534,829 minus the alleged returned profits of $ 84,527. The court also ordered a civil fine of $ 450,302. The expenses were naturally ordered against the defendants.
The CFTC was advised by the Financial Supervision Commission of Bulgaria, the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Financial Services Authority, the Financial Services Authority of Seychelles, the Financial Conduct Authority of the United Kingdom and the Financial Markets Authority of New Zealand, showing how international cooperation it can break even a (relatively) modest ponzi scheme if regulators move quickly and quickly.
Quick Swiss laws offer blockchain benefits and regulatory certainty
A new set of Swiss laws on blockchain and distributed ledger technology was recently announced (Read DLT) and approved by the Swiss Parliament.
The main themes of the new DLT laws are:
-
Establish the possibility of an electronic registration of rights (stored on a blockchain), with characteristics of negotiable securities (a particular type of security defined by Swiss law);
-
Specific discipline of the segregation of crypto assets in the event of bankruptcy; is
-
The creation of a new authorization category for “DLT trading systems” (ie digital currency exchanges).
Rather than introducing a specific new piece of blockchain legislation, the DLT laws amend ten other statutes to address the above topics, ranging from company failure to securities trading and beyond.
The objectives of the amendments are clear: to increase legal certainty and reduce obstacles to the application of blockchain technology and reduce the risks of misuse of the technology.
