Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law. Editor’s note The final scene of Animal Farm, Orwell’s classic fable of revolution gone wrong and a staple of secondary-school reading lists throughout the English-speaking world, features a card game. The pigs who run the farm with an iron hoof host the humans who have gone from enemies of the revolution to drinking buddies of the revolution’s leaders. The book ends with accusations of cheating and a metamorphosis realized. The pigs…
Day: September 25, 2020
Inside the blockchain developer’s mind: The governance crisis
This is Part 3 of a three-part series in which Andrew Levine outlines the issues facing legacy blockchains and posits solutions to these problems. Read Part 1 on the upgradeability crisis here and Part 2 on the vertical scaling crisis here. Upgradeability, vertical scaling and governance: What all three of these issues have in common is that people are attempting to iterate on top of a flawed architecture. Bitcoin and Ethereum were so transformative that they have totally framed the way we look at these issues. We need to remember…
Why centralized exchanges will lead crypto to the future
Decentralized exchanges are undoubtedly an exciting development in crypto. DEXs facilitate the trading of cryptocurrencies directly between users, without the need for a trusted intermediary. This, in turn, allows users to keep custody of their funds. However, while DEXs have their advantages, they still lack in terms of regulations and scalability, which are key considerations that could determine the future trajectory of the crypto industry. Centralized exchanges will continue to play a pivotal role in this ecosystem, providing the depth of liquidity needed to grow the wider crypto community. The…
Blockchain industry raises concerns over EC’s proposed crypto regulations
Major players in the global cryptocurrency community have addressed the European Commission’s new legislative proposals on digital assets. The International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications, or INATBA, has released an initial response to the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulations proposed by the EC. The association features major crypto companies like Ripple, ConsenSys, and Iota. In its official response to the EC, the INATBA members expressed the industry’s concerns over the proposed MiCA regulations, calling the authority to bring their forces together in further development of the regulatory framework. While the…
Major Indian exchange proposes new regulatory framework to avoid crypto ban
Major Indian cryptocurrency exchange BuyUCoin has developed a framework to regulate cryptocurrency in India that it claims has the support of “all the Indian cryptocurrency stakeholders”. However, it is not clear yet which stakeholders helped develop the framework, or ‘sandbox’, which will be officially released on October 2. BuyUCoin, which has more than 350,000 users and handles billion-dollar transactions, described the framework as a draft set of community driven rules, propositions and implementation methods. The framework will be presented to the Indian Government. It comes after the Indian Supreme Court…