Daily: Crypto Markets Rally! Pyramid scheme operators sentenced

Hey everyone and welcome to Box Mining Daily where we take a look at what's happening on the cryptocurrency markets and the biggest cryptocurrency news. So in terms of news, what we have today is that two people are arrested in South Korea for running a pyramid scheme and conning almost $20 million. We also have Bitcoin is not an instrument for the black markets. This is coming from a chief scientist of Quebec and offers a counterpoint to all that FUD news surrounding cryptocurrencies. We also have two major investment firms in the US that are having private talks with the SEC and trying to convince the SEC to give an exemption for cryptocurrencies from being classified as securities. And finally, we have the South Korean exchange Bithumb. They're issuing out their new token in a token sale as well. So all this will be covered and more in today's Box Mining Daily. I do want to say that everything covered here is my personal opinion and not financial advice. So let's take a look at the markets overall. So it seems like cryptocurrency market cap is continuing to push up. We're at $374 billion now. The jump really happened last Thursday with a major price jump in Bitcoin. And it seems like over on towards Friday and Thursday and Friday, the cryptocurrency prices do push up. So today, in terms of the biggest winners, we have Ethereum at 10% growth, Ripple 20%, Bitcoin Cash 18%. It just seems like they're on a continuous rally. EOS also taking a 15% gain today. So in terms of the large winners, it does seem to be focused on the top 10 this week instead of yesterday where we saw outliers going up 70-60%. In terms of news today, two men from South Korea have been sentenced for creating a Bitcoin pyramid scheme. So this is a cryptocurrency pyramid scheme. And we've seen quite a few of these over the past few years. For example, the biggest one of them is BitConnect. But that's not the only one. We got Bitcoin trust and savings. That's probably one of the first ones I was exposed to. And Bitcoin pyramid schemes and cryptocurrency pyramid schemes have been very prevalent in this space. It's just because people don't take the time to understand the technology. And hence, it's a little bit harder to distinguish what's a pyramid scheme from valid projects. So this has been a continuous problem. And we've seen other pyramid schemes too in recent days. For example, proof of weak hands, which is just a blatant, clear pyramid scheme and people are still buying into it. The problem with pyramid schemes is that they don't offer any value in the long run. And people will get burned because eventually it's going to run out of suckers that buy into it. And then you're going to end up with a situation of a massive collapse in the price, just like what happened with BitConnect. My hope for the future is that more people will start to learn about the technology and won't fall victim to pyramid schemes. It's not going to completely go away, but I highly encourage anyone to really do a lot of generating research into a project. And if anything smells fishy, if their whole project and their plan just sounds like free money, there is never a free lunch in cryptocurrencies. So next up, we have a government scientist from Quebec, Remy, coming out to say that, you know what? Forbes reports that Bitcoin was really involved in illicit trading. That's actually wrong. There's been a lot of fun news in the past few months about how Bitcoin was used in either drug trafficking, money laundry, etc. But actually, he did a lot of research into this to prove that this was not the case. So what he says is almost only 0.6 of the money was possibly used as 30 Bitcoin. So that's not a large number and it can be comparable to other currencies as of date. So it's really dispelling all that FUD that's being spread in mainstream media. And this happens a lot because there's a lot of fear brought in by new technology. So there are definitely people who want to associate this new technology with something that funds terrorism. So to stop it or to kind of prevent its growth. But this research came out to say that this is clearly not the case. Next up, we have major crypto investors. They're requesting a token oversight exemption with the SEC. So they're in private talks. So Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures. They're in private talks with the SEC to say, you know what? Can there be a possibility that some tokens be exempt from being classified as a security? We know that this space is highly innovative. And it could benefit from a more relaxed oversight in this field. So they're trying very hard to persuade the SEC to relax them a little bit and to have a different type of oversight for it. So this is something that's definitely very interesting to follow and to see what the response for the SEC on this is going to be. Next up, we have Walmart. Walmart wants to store payment data on the blockchain. This is a realization from enterprises that the blockchain is a really great way of storing data. It's relatively easy to place multiple nodes and for information to be fed to those nodes and then be added to blockchain. And if any data needs to be altered, well, it's done in a fashion where it's very trackable and that information is very transparent. So Walmart's coming out to say, you know what? We're going to file patents for it. Obviously, this is not the best way to grow cryptocurrency. So what I see is going to happen here is that they're going to explore blockchain technology on their own. And then when they realize they need to communicate that information to his face, for example, delivery companies or to auditors, then they'll start to need public blockchains, which are open sourced. Lastly, on the news, the Korean exchange Bitthumb, they're trying to issue out their own token in Singapore. So this is following the success of Binance. Binance was really one of the first exchanges to issue their own token and build a community around that token as well. So Bitthumb is trying to do the same thing. They're a Korean exchange. They have huge exchange volumes in South Korea. And what they're trying to do is they're trying to launch their own token in Singapore. Unfortunately, this might be geared towards private investors only. So more is to follow on this. But it also goes to show that if they can launch this in Singapore, that Singapore is relaxing its rules regarding cryptocurrencies. Because initially they were citing a ban on ICOs in 2017, September. But now it seems like they want to open that up a little bit more as long as it's not a security. For today's discussion on this channel, I would really like to explore pyramid schemes. Have you guys ever fallen victim to pyramid schemes in cryptocurrencies? And if you did, did you ever regret it? And do you feel like it was due to a lack of research? Leave a comment down below. I would love to hear what you think. Thank you guys so much for watching this video. Remember to click the little subscribe button down below. And click the little notification bell to be notified of when new videos like this daily gets released. And when live episodes happen. Thank you guys so much for watching. See you next time.