The Trump administration plans to implement new regulations around the cryptocurrency industry. US Treasury Secretary Mnuchin announced to Congress that FinCEN (the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) will shortly release the new regulations. While Mnuchin spoke favorably of the potential of stablecoins to make “small Dollar payments cross-border,” he warned that crypto privacy allows for money laundering.
Early this week, multiple reports were circulating regarding the theft of funds from the IOTA Trinity wallet. The IOTA team took the decision to turn off the Coordinator, in effect freezing all transactions across the network. While the move demonstrates proof that IOTA is entirely centralized, any further loss of funds will be halted due to the exploit identified in Trinity. Until network function is restored, IOTA users should not open their Trinity wallet.
The founder of a tumbling service was arrested in Ohio. Larry Harmon, the CEO of Coin Ninja, was charged with conspiracy to launder money and operating an unlicensed money transmitter. He faces a maximum sentence of 30 years. Federal prosecutors allege that Harmon knowingly laundered $311 million in funds for darknet markets.
Ned Scott, the CEO of the crypto-incentivized blogging platform, Steem, announced his sale of the company to Justin Sun, founder of TRON. The purchase amount was not disclosed. Steem, a platform with an estimated 20 million users, is expected to rebase from the EOS network to TRON soon.
Before we conclude, this week’s “Bitcoin quick question” is what determines Bitcoin’s price?
Bitcoin’s price is defined as the last trade conducted on a specific exchange. The different exchanges show different prices for Bitcoin because each exchange is completing trades among its own customer base.
When the demand for buying Bitcoin rises the price will rise as well since people are willing to pay more and conduct transactions for a higher price. On the other hand, when demand drops the price will also drops since people aren’t willing to pay as much.
Factors that can cause demand to rise or fall include media hype, loss of trust in fiat currencies, institutional adoption of Bitcoin, decreases in supply such as the upcoming halving event or major sell-offs of other coins on the market.
For more information about Bitcoin’s price and how it behaves visit the link in the description.
Have a question you want us to answer? Just leave it in the comment section below. And if you want to support our videos, consider using the Brave browser for faster, ad free browsing that can also earn you rewards. Just visit the link in the description below.
That’s what’s happened this week in Bitcoin. See you next week.
https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-news-summary-february-17-2020/
