The blockchain/crypto week in quotes

“I see Bitcoin as a dead man walking. Future generations may read about Bitcoin in a finance textbook as a curiosity and wonder what all the fuss was about. There are still some die-hard adherents espousing the virtues of Bitcoin, desperate to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Unfortunately for them, the end may not be pretty when it comes.

Proponents tend to focus on the impact of the blockchain technology that drives it, and make no mistake, blockchain is the real deal. Blockchain is fundamentally changing the way industries do business, from traditional banking to supply chain management. But just because blockchain technology is creating a new paradigm doesn’t mean that Bitcoin shares that same distinction. Television fundamentally changed the way the world received news and entertainment. However, it also gave us the likes of Manimal and My Mother the Car.” Peter Mallouk, President and Chief Investment Officer, Creative Planning

“The banking cartel robbed us blind. They stripped the entire economy and had a mountain of fraud, but it was all ignored as they had to dump $10 trillion into quantitative easing. We must starve the cartel of money, by exiting and using peer-to-peer money.” Andreas Antonopolous

“I definitely do worry [about the SEC], but I think I’m good. I have a securities lawyer who I speak with often. I now have a transparency page where I list everything. The difference with Mayweather and Khaled was they got paid by an ICO, and they didn’t disclose, I have always disclosed. I posted my Blockfolio every single day including my advisory tokens. I even had my lawyer reach out to the SEC last year, so I’ve made a good faith effort towards this. I’m not as concerned as other influencers out there.” Ian Balina

“We are encouraging our international partners to take urgent action to strengthen their AML/CFT frameworks for virtual currency and other related digital asset activities. The lack of AML/CFT regulation of virtual currency exchangers, hosted wallets, and other providers, and, indeed, of the broader digital asset ecosystem, across jurisdictions exacerbates the associated money laundering and other illicit financing risks.  

While the United States regulates, supervises, and brings enforcement actions relating to virtual currency and other digital asset financial activity, many more countries must follow suit. We have made this a priority in our international outreach, including through the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), for which the United States is currently serving as President.” The US Department of the Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Sigal Mandelker

“Blockchain is a technological-mathematical concept, an interesting and important method, and one that will have many uses. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is a Ponzi scheme. I do not believe that it will be possible to make a coin like this and I will not invest in cryptocurrencies. Anyone who has patience and understands the depth of blockchain will find many uses, from holding sensitive medical information to smart contracts.” Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak

“The cryptocurrencies boom will spread in 2019, from digital currency exchanges to crypto derivatives contracts.. Over-the-counter trading in crypto assets will continue its steep upward trend. And asset managers will add crypto assets to their portfolios.

At the same time, distributed ledger technology will increasingly become a force for good in stripping out effort, time and cost from labour-intensive error-ridden processes, such as settlements, reconciliations, and trade finance. Strong interest and support for all blockchain use-cases in 2018, from Fidelity, NYSE, Nasdaq, CBOE, CME, JP Morgan, Société Generalé (and the 75 institutions in the Interbank Information Exchange) will ensure a record year in 2019.” DataArt

“Long term, the future’s brighter than ever. There’s more awareness, there’s more adoption, there’s more stuff happening all over the world…Of course I’m incredibly bullish on the whole cryptocoin ecosystem.” Roger Ver

“We are some way off from cryptocurrencies replacing the Swiss Franc, the Japanese Yen or gold as the preferred safe haven assets. However, as the world moves from fiat money to digital, and as adoption of crypto picks up, there can be no doubt that cryptocurrencies will be firmly in the pantheon of safe haven assets within in the next decade.” Ian McLeod of Thomas Crown Art

“The current reality is that regulatory agencies in the US started with the idea that all cryptoassets are alike, relying on a very broad definition of ‘virtual currency’ originally promulgated by FinCEN and quickly adopted by the IRS. Thus, once it appears that any aspect of crypto is within a particular agency’s mission, the agency generally attempts to assert jurisdiction over all crypto. My paper suggests that a more nuanced regulatory approach would be more in line with stated goals of avoiding overregulation, while still allowing each agency room to fulfil its mission.” Carol R Goforth, University Professor and the Clayton N. Little Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas School of Law

“The crypto market has slightly been relying on the ETF decision from the SEC and in recent weeks they (the SEC) has made it clear that this may not be for some time with another delay until at least the end of Feb 2019. As we head towards the end of the year it feels as though the sell off is still to be concluded and as such there is further scope for more downward pressure. On a technical basis, it is conceivable that we could see this down trend continue in the coming weeks, with the next big technical level of support is seen around the $2,580 price area.” David Thomas, Director and Co-founder, GlobalBlock