#bitcoinpolicy

That means that clearly non-Chinese ICOs didn't kill their start-up funding plans because of bans in China (and subsequent bans in South Korea). Instead, most put their plans to launch on pause to figure out ways to legitimize their activity and find the right investors now that simple crowdsourcing these things in China is illegal under the ban. Chinese with crypto wallet accounts in Singapore, Hong Kong, London and elsewhere are still buying tokens of companies listing on exchanges and still speculating in cryptocurrencies.

Open Money found Chinese smart money. They built relationships with Chinese venture funds over the years and private asset managers who are now delving into the crypto markets. Those characters in China are known as "whales". The whales tend to be large funds with tens of millions of dollars to throw around, often belonging to the family offices of Chinese multi-millionaires and billionaires.

"We are definitely getting Chinese money and are still talking to a number of China-based funds," Sangha says

The International Monetary Fund and El Salvador are nearing a staff-level agreement on the second review of the country’s Extended Fund Facility program. Discussions cover fiscal consolidation, financial sector reforms, the future of the state-backed Chivo wallet, and the management of Bitcoin-related risks.

The IMF acknowledges stronger-than-expected economic growth, projecting around 4% GDP expansion this year. Budget execution and pension reforms remain broadly aligned with program targets, while banking-sector legislation and AML/CFT updates have improved financial resilience.

Texas Bitcoin Bill Faces Deadline: Key Decision on Public Bitcoin Investment by May 24. In a major development for the crypto community, the Texas Bitcoin Bill is moving through the state’s legislative process, with lawmakers set to decide its fate by May 24, 2025. The bill, which aims to allow the state to invest public funds in Bitcoin (BTC), has already passed a significant hurdle in the Texas Senate, where it was approved by a wide margin of 25-2. As the bill moves to the Texas House, attention now shifts to whether House members will expedite the process and send the proposal to the governor’s desk soon.

By removing anonymity in food supply chains, blockchain technology can support a safer, smarter, and more sustainable food supply. The cost of adopting blockchain technology will no doubt be passed along to the consumer, and therefore awareness of blockchain’s benefits must be made available to ensure consumer buy-in. Fortunately, such buy-in might be easier to obtain than might be thought. Scholars such as Sam Goundar and Abderahman Rejeb have found overwhelming support at least by other scholars for introducing blockchain technology in food supply chains.

Yet it is unlikely that governments will have the capacity to mandate the use of blockchain because even the minimum economic impacts of such a mandate on small- to medium-sized business would be damaging.

Many available technological solutions appear to be producer or industry-led, rather than government-led. Some industry advocates advance a strong corporate social responsibility argument that, without implementing decentralized traceability solutions, a company’s product or brand could suffer.

Policing the implementation and use of any mandated technologies could also be challenging, and thus any government’s incentive to mandate blockchain’s use could be fraught.

Still, trading nations should look to harmonize common food names and food-related illegal activities to support better food fraud enforcement. Communication about effective, decentralized traceability technologies can promote consumer trust in brands.

Blockchain has the potential to transcend borders and regulations by empowering producers and consumers to legitimize supply chains—removing the need for countless intermediaries who may facilitate food fraud or other crimes such as corruption and document fraud.

Decentralized Finance has had a stellar year in general, but it’s fair to say that the release of Uniswap V2 in May has made 2020 a milestone year in terms of decentralized exchange adoption. By August, the exchange had topped the trading volume of Coinbase Pro, and by December, it had achieved over $50 billion in lifetime volume.

Furthermore, Uniswap inadvertently found itself the victim of its own success when SushiSwap launched in August. The new exchange emerged as a clone of Uniswap’s code but with its own token in the background. Dubbed a “vampire attack,” the move appeared to threaten Uniswap’s dominance by draining liquidity from the exchange. Even worse, SushiSwap’s move spawned a string of similar copycat exchanges, with several setting up home on Binance’s newly launched Smart Chain.

However, Uniswap had the last laugh after it launched its own token in September, distributing UNI to anyone who had ever contributed liquidity to the platform. The move helped Uniswap win the liquidity wars, and it continues to outperform its rivals today.

The suit claims that Ripple violated securities laws by selling XRP, which The Wall Street Journal calls “the third-largest cryptocurrency by market value,” over a seven-year period starting in 2013. According to the complaint, the “illegal securities offering” created an information asymmetry that let Larsen and Garlinghouse sell XRP to investors who only knew what Larsen and Garlinghouse chose to tell them.

At the heart of the suit is a basic question about XRP: is it a security or a currency? According to the SEC’s suit, it’s a security, and so Ripple didn’t provide its investors with the proper information they needed to assess any potential risk. According to Garlinghouse, it’s a virtual currency, which means the SEC has nothing to do with it. The SEC has previously ruled that bitcoin and Ethereum are currencies. Also, the Justice Department treated XRP as a currency in 2015, when Ripple settled a suit over its business.

But XRP differs from bitcoin and Ethereum in an important way. For those two cryptocurrencies, new coins are created through a “mining” process, which is ongoing. Ripple started XRP by creating 100 billion units all at once. Ripple owns about 6.4 billion XRP, and Garlinghouse and Larsen also own a good chunk of it. Another 48 billion XRP are held in reserve, for periodic sales. This difference may be why the SEC is claiming XRP is a security, not a currency.

E-commerce firm PayPal Holdings (PYPL) is the IBD Stock of the Day on hitting an all-time high after a recent breakout from a cup base. PayPal stock has advanced since it joined rival Square (SQ) in allowing customers to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

PayPal stock hit an all-time high of 223.16 in intraday trading on Monday before pulling back a bit to close at 220.79, up 3.1%. With Monday's gain, PayPal stock moved back above a cup-base buy point of 215.93.

However, investors should consider a 220.67 entry point as more appropriate. PayPal stock began consolidating after hitting a new high on Dec. 1.

The Winklevoss twins pitched a large purchase of Bitcoin today as the "trade of the century" and predicted the digital currency will soar by 30 times in a recent Real Vision interview.

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss also described Bitcoin as a social network, suggested comic books and baseball cards would increasingly move to blockchains, and bemoaned the Federal Reserve's lack of transparency.

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss described buying a large amount of Bitcoin now as the "trade of the century" and predicted the cryptocurrency will soar 30-fold from its current price of about $19,000.

The twins, who famously accused Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their idea when he launched the social-media company, are Bitcoin billionaires and run a digital-currency exchange named Gemini.