Crypto Lawyers Are in Hot Demand as the Industry Goes Mainstream, Say Experts

The crypto market might soon see an uptick in legal hiring as it is moving out of regulatory gray zones.

• JPMorgan Chase reportedly has taken on Coinbase and Gemini as customers.
• News recently began to circulate of Coinbase potentially being listed on the stock market.
• Global payments giant PayPal also recently began hiring crypto talent.
• Not to mention that there has been an overall increase in crypto from institutional investors.

SEC and CFTC Fine Crypto Investment App for Offering Synthetic Assets

According to the SEC’s release, Abra effectively offered “security-based swaps” to retail investors without the proper registration, in addition to “failing to transact those swaps on a registered national exchange.”

Abra offered a type of “centralized” synthetic asset, where users were able to get exposure to traditional securities like stocks by putting up Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC) as collateral. The system removed or added the coins based on how much the underlying security moved up or down.

What is a synthetic asset?

The term “synthetic asset” refers to a mix of assets that have the same value as another asset. Traditionally, synthetics combine various derivative products — options, futures or swaps — that simulate an underlying asset — stocks, bonds, commodities, indexes, currencies or interest rates.

What are crypto synthetic assets?

Cryptocurrency-based synthetic assets aim to give users exposure to a variety of different assets without needing to hold the underlying asset. This could be anything from fiat currencies, such as the United States dollar or the Japanese yen, to commodities like gold and silver, as well as index funds or other digital assets.

Read more: Crypto Synthetic Assets Explained

Singapore’s Blockchain Payments Platform Ready for Commercial Launch

Singapore authorities announced today that their blockchain payments project, Project Ubin, is complete and ready for commercial launch.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore, or MAS, first undertook Project Ubin in 2017 with plans to first develop a digitized Singapore dollar (SGD). The next steps involved exploring blockchain and distributed ledger technology to build a system for the clearing and settlement of payments and securities using digital SGD.

G20 Lays Regulatory Groundwork for Accepting Digital Payments

According to the Japanese news outlet – Kyodo News, G20 officials enacted the policy change in response to China’s progress on creating a digital yuan, and Facebook’s anticipated release of Libra.

Cointelegraph reported in June that the People’s Bank of China’s Na­tional Coun­cil for So­cial Se­cu­rity announced the completion of the backend architecture development for the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC).

The post Updates on Legal Policy and Regulatory Framework for Cryptocurrency and Digital Payment appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

Networking Dinner

There was a warm welcome networking dinner prior to the event.

Sooner Than You Think Conference

It’s always a good thing to start the day with a nice cup of coffee. Thanks to Bettr Barista for keeping that sleepy away.

Forget sooner than you think, the future is already here.

That’s the opening statement by Haslinda Amin, Chief International Correspondent for Southeast Asia, Bloomberg Television as she delivers the welcoming remarks.

AI has been around for decades, what makes it more viable today is our ability to better marshal data resources.

Just watch this space and hold back in judgement.

As what S Iswaran, Minister for Communications and Information, Minister-in-charge of Trade Relations, Republic of Singapore put it:

Somewhere between dystopia and utopia there is a place for us.

From Unicorn to Decacorn

The session around 12.10pm on 5th Sept saw the appearance of Jeffrey Perlman – Managing Director, Head of Southeast Asia, Warburg Pincus, and Andre Soelistyo (President, Gojek) on stage in conversation with Yoolim Lee, Reporter, Asia Technology, Bloomberg.

The session profile Gojek’s next stage of growth and find out how one of their investors – Warburg Pincus – is helping the evolution.

Seems like it only took Gojek a few years time to reach the status of Decacorn.

And they are on the path for Super App.

What matters most for a unicorn to become a decacorn?

A) Vision
B) Execution
C) Capital
D) Culture
E) Product / Market fit
F) Luck

The majority from the floor voted Execution as the key factor, which was echoed by both Andre Soelistyo (President, Gojek) and Jeffrey Perlman (Managing Director, Head of Southeast Asia, Warburg Pincus – one of Gojek’s investors).

#Execution.

When you have to fight with the world’s best of the best, maintain the largest balance sheet to become the largest payment solutions company in Indonesia.

A Decacorn company from South East Asia where the founders build it because they want to create #impact for the little guys.

#Gojek #UniquelyIndonesia #Food #Stickiness #Captive #Bloomberg #STYT #TheFutureOf

Passion

Be it the sharing from Harriet Green, CEO and Chairman of IBM Asia Pacific, or the sharing from Andre Soelistyo, President of Gojek, one thing in common is that they are both passionate about what they are doing.

It’s nice to have the chance to catch up with Rennie Sng from Crypto Valley Singapore as well.

Inevitably, in most of the panelist sessions, two of the most brought up matters are the US-China trade war and the recent Jack MA-Elon Musk debate on AI.

All in all, this event is more on AI & Data, with a little bit touching on Connectivity (a specific session on Cyber Security) and Ethics in AI. There is definitely something to watch out for as AI and Blockchain makes a perfect match.

Thank you Bloomberg Live for organizing such a great event.

Thank you Conrad Centennial Singapore for the warm hosting. See you guys again elsewhere.

The post Sooner Than You Think appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

Attended two great sessions in the morning of 15th August 2018. It was an event by TureEventUs titled “Blockchain In Governments”.

One of which Datuk Dr. Mohd Yusoff Sulaiman, the CEO from MiGHT who made a big headline of ‘Malaysia Sasar Guna Blockchain Tahun 2025’ (Malaysia target blockchain implementation by 2025), shared the topic “Challenges and Opportunities for Blockchain Adoption: The Malaysian Experience”.

With Datuk Dr Mohd Yusoff Sulaiman (President and CEO, MiGHT), and Effendy Zulkifly (Secretary General, Crypto Valley Malaysia)

Another session was about “Consolidating land and property ownerships through a streamlined and immutable Blockchain database” by Polina Gusak from Switzerland, where she shared a use case on how a Blockchain backed application called Sesamee (open the door? lol) is collaborating with the UK government and the UK largest property company in digitising property titles.

One of a few good blockchain related event with no ICO pitching (at least not in the Blockchain In Government track), organized by trueeventus.

The post Blockchain In Government appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

A trip to Singapore was made on 16th July 2018 with colleagues from Crypto Valley Malaysia.

We made a few decisions along the way as we were attending CVA Forum #2 in Singapore, which was to be held the next day on 17th July 2018, in conjunction with Crypto Valley Singapore’s launching.

The Blockchain Ecosystem

Our host, Mr. Rennie gave his speech on The Blockchain Ecosystem.

We had panelist from Russia, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore sharing their views and their home land’s blockchain ecosystem info with the audience.

It was a great session where ideas were exchanged and network was built.

Meet The Real Founders

The afternoon session was held at Pan Pacific Hotel Singapore, a full house session.

We had panelists from Malaysia, Singapore, Russia, New Zealand and United States.

A group photo of Crypto Valley Malaysia and Singapore’s team.

The event was planned and executed in quite an ad hoc way. Kudos, great minds.

We at Crypto Valley Alliance having some fun with the stage.

It’s a great meet up with another book author from Singapore, Karen New – who just launched her book New Assets – Ride on the Cryptocurrency Wave!: Step by Step Guide to build The Fastest Growing Assets

Looking forward for more global scale collaboration soon. After all, Blockchain is multi-discipline and tech is a global game.

The post Crypto Valley Alliance Soft Launch in Singapore appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

In my humble opinion, as we are moving towards a moneyless society, their speeches came just in time to aware more people about the existence of the Crypto World and what we can do about it.

Both

speech given by Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England dated 2 Mar, 2018, titled “The Future of Money” (video embedded below)

and

speech given by Ravi Menon, Managing Director, Monetary Authority of Singapore dated 15 March 2018, titled “Crypto Tokens: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”

gave quite a clear understanding to the public regarding the existence of the two monetary world (illustrated in sub-topic under Chapter 3 of the book Blockchain Insider, “A Tale of Two Worlds“, which is yet to be published).

The overall progress in the financial world is good as the authorities started to look into it and understand more about Crypto related matters.

What I prefer is to blend in the best of both world.

Related topics:

Towards A Moneyless Society

A Tale of Two Worlds

The Future of Money by Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England

The post As The Regulators Steps In appeared first on Blockchain Insider.