24th November 2021 > > EU regulation.

tl;dr

As ever with the EU, there is the good and the bad.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

BTC is trading in a tight $2k range, currently sitting bang in the middle of that range.

Some price weakness is being ascribed to the mooted ban of all cryptos in India to which my considered response is not on your nellie. Indian newspapers are reporting that BTC, ETH and the alt market are all down by 30% or more in India.

Two things to consider – firstly, it isn’t possible to ban trading of cryptos, though as China has proved it is possible to move mining out of your own country if you are a despotic, totalitarian regime that has no problem with imprisoning and torturing your own citizens on the basis of ethnicity and/or faith.

Secondly, an attempted ban will always lead to local price distortions to the upside, as we saw earlier this year in Nigeria.

Occasional Series – The CCC is woke

At a recent matriculation event, students complained vociferously that a remark from the photographer created a “targeted atmosphere of inequality” and made them “feel unsafe”. (*)

If you are interested in the heinous crime that has led to these horrible accusations, I can share that information with you.

For those of a sensitive disposition, look away now and scroll down to the commentary about EU regulation.

The photographer had suggested that the gentlemen might help the ladies get down from the platform on which they were all standing for the photos.

No prizes for guessing that these students are at Cambridge University.

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I always let those who present as women, trans or otherwise, onto buses and tubes before me, including at rush hour. I hold open doors in shops and offices. I only ever receive a smile and a thank you in response.

To maintain full on woke credentials for the CCC, do I have to instruct the CCC team to start behaving in a rude and obnoxious manner towards women?

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – EU regulation

The ECB, headed by Convicted Criminal Christine Lagarde, has announced a new electronic payments framework which will specifically include cryptos, stablecoins and “digital payment tokens”.

I assume the latter should include Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) but governments and their agencies, such as the ECB, seem remarkably unwilling to subject themselves to the same rules and oversight that they demand of everyone else.

I just can’t think why that might be.

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Known as the PISA framework, the regulation appears to be aimed more at the enablers of the crypto world, than individual cryptos themselves:

“The PISA framework will also cover crypto-asset-related services, such as the acceptance of crypto-assets by merchants within a card payment scheme and the option to send, receive or pay with crypto-assets via an electronic wallet.”

Dare I say it, but on the face of it this seems like a reasonable, well-balanced, and positive approach to the admittedly difficult task of designing crypto regulation. Lagarde must be absolutely fuming right now because this is not her style at all – I know from personal experience of trying to do (honest) business with her.

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Governments seem to want to pay stablecoins a lot of attention, presumably because they are much easier to understand than, I dunno, reserve treasury protocols for instance.

With stablecoins, the EU regulatory waters are getting a lot murkier. The dead hand of Lagarde has been at work.

The ECB states that stablecoins should not be allowed to operate in the EU until they meet regulatory requirements.

This is a bland statement of intent that is utterly impossible to achieve. An online or hardware wallet, a VPN, and a stash of cryptos in that wallet – how does the EU expect to police activity around a(n) (unregulated) stablecoin?

Moving on from the impossible to the ridiculous, the ECB also wants to ban the name “stablecoin”, stating it is inappropriate.

How is it the ECB hasn’t got anything better to do than spend hours of civil servants’ time and bucket loads of taxpayers’ money discussing a moratorium on the use of the word “stablecoin”?

Seriously? I could never have worked in the public sector. Drive me nuts it would.

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But let us not be churlish. The broad thrust of this initiative is surprisingly well intentioned, and we should applaud the ECB for that alone.

(*) If you feel unsafe standing on a stage, don’t get up there in the first place would be my advice.