Much has been made of the clear divergence between Asia’s embrace of blockchain innovation versus the West. But three seemingly disparate storylines this month suggest the gap might be widening as we speak. The first is South Korea creating a special enterprise zone for cryptocurrency trading and initial coin offerings. China’s fast-accelerating timetable for issuing its…
Key Highlights The inherent differences in policy that result from country-specific priorities and demands lead to opportunities for arbitrage across borders. It is in the interest of all parties involved to prevent this from happening, even if that means compromising on certain rules. The input of drastically different nations on their experiences with regulating cryptocurrency…
Facebook just did the unthinkable in the Donald Trump era: give America’s Republicans and Democrats something on which to agree. Same with the Group of Seven nations taking a dim view of the social media giant minting its own money. US President Trump declared that Libra, Facebook’s proposed virtual currency, “will have little standing or…
Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Committee (FSC) has recently released guidance on STO rules. What does this mean for the regulation in Taiwan, particularly as it emerges as a hub for blockchain growth and development? Angie Lau, Editor-in-Chief of Forkast.News sits down with Sam Reynolds to learn more. Read the related piece from Sam Reynolds: Innovation versus…
Taiwan is known as a hub for semiconductors and technology, but not finance. While neighboring Hong Kong has HSBC, and Singapore to its south has DBS, Taiwan’s financial sector — mighty on paper in its own right with approximately $1 trillion in financial assets on the books — lacks the global cachet of its neighbors.…
SAN FRANCISCO — Credit card giant Visa has launched its blockchain-powered business-to-business payments service B2B Connect. B2B Connect can now be used by businesses seeking to make payments to 30 markets, with 90 more expected to be added by the end of this year. To start, it’s available for B2B transactions of $15,000 and up, which…
Key Highlights The Kik case is the first case that the SEC has brought in litigation that has been contested by the company where there are no allegations of fraud “The SEC has made clear that virtually all ICOs are going to be treated as offerings of securities.” Even if a company is offering ICOs…
HONG KONG — Average investors may soon be able to get a piece of the world’s hottest property market. One real estate giant is considering tapping into the world of blockchain for liquidity. It’s just an MoU at the moment, and certainly it is not unique; as many are exploring selling/investing in real estate with…
How the race to get billions of users onto blockchain has this mathematician thinking about the future of work. Could decentralization be the one thing that actually binds us together. Charles Hoskinson sits down with Angie Lau, in Hong Kong a week after Hong Kong Blockchain Week and shares his vision of how 2019 will…
Key Highlights The regulatory challenge is in how to balance proactively supporting blockchain development while defining the ways in which the regulatory body should protect against downsides Traditional approaches in thinking about regulation from a national level will not be enough; national systems need to work well together and move towards harmonization, even if it’s…