Daily: Venezuela goes full on crypto / Fake Trade Volumes / Hackit Conference

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Venezuela issues national ICO for the Petro, introducing 31 Million people to Cryptocurrencies. We also take a deep dive into trade volumes and real user numbers on cryptocurrency exchanges. 1:24 Ma...

Venezuela issues national ICO for the Petro, introducing 31 Million people to Cryptocurrencies. We also take a deep dive into trade volumes and real user numbers on cryptocurrency exchanges. 1:24 Market Recap 1:38 Venezuela joins the crypto revolution (kinda) 4:36 Fake Exchange Volumes 6:12 CTFC : Virtual Currencies are Commodities 7:53 Hackit! Hackit Conference: https://hackit.ua/ CTFC Press Release https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/7820-18 Trade Volumes: https://blog.cryptoexchangeranks.com/industry-news/is-making-fake-24-h-trading-volumes-the-best-marketing-strategy-for-crypto-exchanges/ Venelzuela https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/25/venezuela-inflation-crisis-nicolas-maduro https://www.ccn.com/venezuelas-oil-backed-petro-appears-to-be-a-blatant-copy-of-dash/ 👍🏻Subscribe to Boxmining for Daily CryptoNews and Altcoin explainers: https://www.youtube.com/c/boxmining 👑Recommended Exchange - Binance: https://goo.gl/joe55C 🔒Hardware Wallet: https://www.ledgerwallet.com/r/428b 📲Mobile Wallet: https://enjinwallet.io/ Brave Browser: https://brave.com/box831 #Bitcoin #Ethereum #Cryptocurrency #Crypto #Altcoins ●▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬● Telegram groups: Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/boxminingChannel Telegram Announcements: https://t.me/boxminingChannel ●▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬● ♨️Social: Steemit: https://steemit.com/@boxmining Twitter: https://twitter.com/boxmining Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/boxmining ●▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬● I'm not a professional financial adviser and you should always do your own research. I may hold the cryptocurrencies talked about in the video. ●▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬●

AI Analysis

Here’s a look at some of the latest happenings in the crypto world, from a government attempting to fix its economy with a national cryptocurrency to questions about whether exchange trading volumes can actually be trusted. We’ll also cover a significant U.S. regulatory update and talk about the importance of cybersecurity in the crypto space.

Here's a breakdown of the key topics:

* Market Recap: The overall crypto market cap is hovering around $219 billion, showing slight recovery but mostly sideways trading.
* Venezuela's Petro: A National Crypto Experiment:
* Venezuela, facing a staggering 1 million percent inflation crisis where their fiat currency (Bolivars) is literally used as trash, decided to launch a national cryptocurrency called the Petro.
* The goal is to bypass international sanctions and encourage investment from outside using Bitcoin, Ethereum, US dollars, and Euros.
* The Petro is supposedly "backed by oil," but this is problematic because a central authority (the Venezuelan government, which caused the inflation in the first place) controls the oil reserves, making it untrustworthy.
* There's no trust in a government that allowed its own national currency to hyperinflate so severely.
* Despite the Petro itself being seen as "useless" or a "scam," a silver lining is that it allows Venezuelan citizens to use their near-worthless Bolivars to buy Petros.
* The hope is that citizens can then exchange these Petros for cryptocurrencies with actual international value and liquidity, like Bitcoin or Ethereum, effectively exposing a whole population to the crypto ecosystem. This is a big win for crypto adoption, even if the Petro itself is flawed.
* The Problem of Fake Exchange Volumes:
* Wall Street is questioning the integrity of reported cryptocurrency exchange volumes, and there's a good reason to be skeptical.
* Many centralized exchanges, like Fcoin, have policies that can promote "wash trading" (where users trade with themselves to inflate volume numbers).
* Exchanges don't have to report actual unique user numbers or transaction amounts, and there's no auditing, making it easy for them to fabricate high volumes to appear more active and attract users.
* Research by Crypto Exchange Research (CR) involves "detective work" to estimate actual unique monthly users and "volume transacting per user," which are more reliable indicators.
* It's eye-opening to see disparities, like Bitforex reporting $12,000 of volume per user compared to Binance's $861, suggesting fabricated numbers on some platforms.
* The key takeaway is that we need to be very cautious and skeptical of the reported trading volumes on many exchanges.
* CFTC Classifies Virtual Currencies as Commodities:
* The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has issued a new document classifying virtual currencies as "commodities."
* This is a significant step for regulation and compliance in the U.S. because it helps clarify the legal standing of cryptocurrencies.
* This ruling came from a federal court case where a scam falsely advertised international trading and gold-backed coins, sounding eerily similar to the Petro situation.
* The classification as commodities means the CFTC has authority over them.
* However, there's still a need for further clarification on which specific coins are commodities and which might be classified as "securities" by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as the SEC has also been investigating some ICO coins.
* Hackit Conference in Kiev: Focusing on Cybersecurity:
* Excitement for attending the Hackit cybersecurity conference in Kiev, Ukraine, as it's a refreshing change from typical ICO-focused events.
* Ukraine has a large and active crypto developer community.
* The conference's focus on cybersecurity is crucial because protecting our cryptocurrencies is paramount; otherwise, you risk losing everything to hacks.
* Learning from "white hat hackers" about how to secure wallets and even email accounts is invaluable knowledge for every crypto holder.
* This highlights an important actionable takeaway: prioritize learning and implementing strong security practices for your crypto assets.

Transcript

Ooh, a government official is telling me that I can buy Petros with Bolivars. We'll tell you guys what that means in today's episode. Today is going to be an update on what's happening on the cryptocurrency news front. We got this whole Venezuela cryptocurrency thing here. It's really going to launch. We're going to look at exactly what it is, what it means, and what they should be actually doing in Venezuela. We also have some accusations of fake volumes and such. It came out on Wall Street Jo...

Ooh, a government official is telling me that I can buy Petros with Bolivars. We'll tell you guys what that means in today's episode. Today is going to be an update on what's happening on the cryptocurrency news front. We got this whole Venezuela cryptocurrency thing here. It's really going to launch. We're going to look at exactly what it is, what it means, and what they should be actually doing in Venezuela. We also have some accusations of fake volumes and such. It came out on Wall Street Journal. We're going to talk about that in relation to what's happening in this whole cryptocurrency ecosystem. Can we really trust the volumes that we see? Finally, we see some federal courts. They're saying, you know what? Virtual currencies are commodities. Yeah, they're not really currencies. So everything and more in today's box is my name, Daily. I'm going to put this episode a little bit shorter than usual because I have T-minus one hour before I need to go to the airport for Kiev to this conference. It's Kiev. It's Ukraine. It's a place I've never been to before. And we're going to the cybersecurity conference, Hackett, organized by Hacken. I'm actually really excited for this because it's finally a conference that's not ICO-based and talking about something that's really important, how to keep our cryptos safe. So I'll talk about what's being covered there in the end as well. So make sure you stay to the end of this episode. And of course, with all episodes, everything covered here is my personal opinion, not financial advice. So let's take a quick glance at the current markets right now. We're back up to around $219 billion for the overall market cap. So we're recovering slightly. We're just really sideways trading every day. Now, on to the biggest news today. So the president of Venezuela came and said, you know what? We're announcing a new cryptocurrency, a national cryptocurrency. So this is one that an ICO that's done by a whole country. And to explain why they're doing this, you must really look at the backdrop of Venezuela. So what happened before this was that Venezuela is under this huge inflation crisis. And to just put that into perspective, this is a picture of them just using their money, using their fiat cash as literal trash, just folding and making paper bags and stuff out of it. Just imagine this. If you lived in a country and you worked all your life until you're six years old, you have a savings in the bank account, you're planning to maybe buy a nice car or a nice house to retire. And then suddenly all that's gone. All you can do with that money that you saved up is probably buy a loaf of bread. How is that even possible? And that's because the government's just been printing money. Centralized authorities, central governments can print fiat to their discretion. And it's kind of due to the government. And what they're trying to do now is to use crypto to solve it. So they're trying to get around these international sanctions imposed on Venezuela. And they're trying to say, you know what? People can invest and buy this new cryptocurrency, this petrol with Ethereum, with your Bitcoins, or with your US dollars and Euros. Give us your money. Anyone outside who's dumb enough to fall for the scam. And you know what? They're like, to add more to it, we're going to back this petrol with our oil. Because we got oil here in Venezuela. The only problem with such a structure is that the oil that's backing it, the amount that they store, that's a central authority controlling it. So if you have a central authority, can you really trust an authority that let their currency inflate, their national currency inflate 1 million percent? They don't really have much credibility here. There's no trust. And especially if they're backing something that's a physical commodity, no thanks. But the good news, the good news for all this is that this exposes their population to cryptocurrencies. The good news is, and they can say you can buy Petros with Silver and Boulevard. So they can use their national currency to buy these Petros. And guess what? Then they can change that to cryptocurrencies of actual value. Maybe Bitcoin, Ethereum, VeChain, name it. Anything that's accepted internationally. Anything that has value and has liquidity. And what's cool about that is that exposes a whole population to crypto. So thank you so much, Venezuela. Your coin is useless, but you got everyone into crypto. Thank you. Now this piece of news came on Wall Street. So Wall Street's been attacking crypto for a while now. But I read this article and there is a grain of kind of truth to what they're saying, which is the fact, and I've alerted to this in the past as well, where our volumes. Can we really trust the volumes that are going on that were being reported by our exchanges? We've seen in the past ridiculous volumes reported by something like Fcoin. We talked about extensively how they pretty much have a policy that promotes wash trading. Because these exchanges are centralized, they don't have to report their actual user numbers. There's no auditing, so to speak, to report user numbers, to report actual transaction amounts. And we even see this report by the Hacking team as well. This is one reported by CR Crypto Exchange Research. They did some detective work on various exchanges and they tried to figure out the actual number of unique monthly users. This is a very important number because that tells you how many people are actually using the exchange. And the reason why we don't believe the exchange numbers for this is because these numbers can be fabricated. And exchange, because they're centralized and you can't audit it, they can say, yeah, we have like 20 billion people using it. The whole world's using the exchange. So you can see like exchanges like Bitforex, they're reporting $12,000 of volume transacting per user. While Binance, we have 861. So it's kind of very interesting to see these volumes per users coming through. And this is the kind of detective work we need in this space to kind of figure out what's really going on. Last bit of news for everyone living in the U.S. So this is a new document issued today on by the CFTC. And what they're saying is that they're finding and classifying virtual currencies as commodities. This is really huge because in terms of regulation and compliance, this is still important because if you're living in the U.S. You have to obey the law. The law has a problem classifying what the hell are cryptocurrencies, right? They can fit under SEC wants to say, yeah, there can be possibly securities. At least some of these ICO coins are. And then the CFTC is like, yeah, those are actually currencies. No, we have authority here. Here the federal court is saying virtual currencies are commodities because they want the CFTC to go after my Bitcoin. Apparently this is a scam that falsely advertised themselves to say that they are trading internationally to investors and they have gold backing them. This sounds a little bit familiar with what's going on over here. Yeah. So there are cases where people are gullible enough to believe that something might be backing a coin. And they might fall for us. So right here, the court ruling right now finds the virtual currencies are classified as commodities. So what we need to do right now is we need a little bit more further clarification. We need them to say, you know, what coins, what exactly, what exact coins are commodities? What exact coins are securities? Because SEC has also been, you know, sending out a few letters asking people, you know, what's exactly happening to our company? You might be classified as a security. Be careful. So we need some more clarification here as well. And guys, I'm going to Kiev today. I'm really excited for that. You know, this is such an amazing opportunity to see two things. One is what's happening globally with crypto, the Ukrainian population. They're huge. There's a huge community of crypto developers and projects there, including Haken, of course, who has organized the event and also security as well. This is a topic that I really want to get to the root of. How do we really protect our cryptocurrencies? This knowledge is invaluable. It's what is core because otherwise you can get your wallet hacked and lose all your crypto and lose all the progress you made here. So I think it's really important to have an update and to speak to actual white hat hackers about how to protect wallets or even our email account. I will post all the updates and my adventures on Instagram and on Twitter. So if you guys had subscribed, do check it out to Instagram. The great way to catch up and I'm there. I'm going to try to have my whole adventure there and also Twitter as well. So make sure you follow me there and I really want to keep in touch with you guys during this adventure. So thank you guys so much for watching today and see you on Instagram.