Digital Currency Revolution Series: Bitwise Beams Up With Great Deal of Optimism, Libra Undergoes Rough Patch

Two crypto firms, ‘Bitwise and Facebook’ who appear to be determined and flexible to go back to the drawing board and get flourished in their ongoing crypto-projects. The duos have been confronting the regulatory obstacles of late.

Bitwise writes to SEC: Bitwise has now communicated with the SEC through a letter correspondence on their proposal of bitcoin ETFs. Wherein, Bitwise appears to be urging aggressively and convincingly to push hard for the regulatory agency’s guideline and obtain green signal. 

The efforts came in as the SEC expressing its concerns regarding market manipulation and surveillance sharing. On that part, Bitwise clarifies and emphasizes their commitment toward this product irrespective of the scenarios.

While the growing number of prospective investors in the U.S. into this asset class, are aggressively allocating their investments into bitcoin that wonders many of us where the cognisance is lacking on this market on a regular basis. 

For instance, Charles Schwab, recently published a study of self-directed retirement plans held at the firm. The study showed that the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, a Trust that issues shares to accredited investors in private placements under Regulation D of the Securities Act of 1933 and allows those shares to trade on the OTCQX under Rule 144 with the ticker “GBTC” —is currently the fifth largest holding in millennial retirement accounts, ahead of companies like Berkshire Hathaway, Walt Disney, and Microsoft. 

The ray of hope on SEC-approved ETF still appears to be intact as Bitwise Managing Director Matt Hougan, stated recently at CNBC that his investment firm is “closer than ever” to obtaining approval for his firm’s Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), he seemed to be quite assertive that it would be “exciting week,” during Bitwise Bitcoin ETF proposal knocked the US-SEC.

Although the US SEC declined the latest proposal from Bitwise, the US security watchdog (SEC) has reconsidered to review its decision about the Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) filing from Bitwise Asset Management and NYSE Arca.

The SEC has announced that the ETF filing from Bitwise Asset Management and NYSE Arca is reconsidered for review. The U.S. regulators mentioned that the applicants did not meet the necessary requirements, that could be potential market manipulation, custody issues or even illicit activities, due to which the application might have been declined. 

The various U.S-based crypto companies for financial services have been constantly attempting their luck at issuing publicly-traded Bitcoin funds (ETFs).

Libra undergoes rough patch: Entire cryptocurrency industry, some sovereign governments and central banking communities across the globe have been meticulous post Facebook’s announcement of Libra blockchain payment network. 

The House Financial Services Committee, Federal reserve chairman Jerome Powell also said that the current Libra framework has not absolutely addressed wider concerns around issues such as “Money laundering, data protection, and consumer privacy.” Powell said these concerns “will need to be addressed very thoroughly and carefully,” by Libra.

Hence, Facebook’s earlier assertiveness has now been shifted to a cautious approach. 

Hence, with that perspective, the Libra Engineering team has recently published a 2nd roadmap titled “Libra Core Roadmap 2” for Libra Core, which happens to be the mainnet  framework that fortifies the intended Libra network.

For now, Facebook has emphasized the three key areas: 

1) Delivering mainnet features in priority order, 

2) Defining launch criteria for going from Libra pre-mainnet to mainnet, and 

3) Educating and including the Libra community so that they can be valuable contributors to the Libra project.