Plenty of exciting stuff in crypto in Asia goes overlooked in the US.
Here are some updates this week from #Asia in #crypto amidst a bear market:
From the Philippines 🇵🇭:
SEC is looking to define all tokens as securities by default. Earlier, it also deemed crypto cloud mining contracts as securities. This increases false positives (non-securities deemed as securities).
A bike-sharing startup has sold its majority stake in exchange for crypto. It will use its tokens to reward renters and promote bike usage. Convincing HK users to use bikes AND set up crypto wallets...hmm 🤔
@Vechain1 is working on a traceability solution to combat vaccine fraud in China. According to their team, they are the only provider approved by Shanghai officials.
@HuobiGroup aims to target 30% of the local market in Korea by next year and has allegedly attracted 200K users within first 2 months. Besides being an exchange, Huobi has also set up a 100 billion won fund (~$885USD).
Bank of Thailand allows Thai banks to issue digital tokens, provide crypto brokerage, deal in crypto businesses and even invest in crypto - but only through subsidiaries.
Using a different browser than your main one for eth transactions through an in-browser wallet (or using another browser profile) is a viable workaround. /2
"Providing exposure" alone is not a defensible strategy for funds.
Fund managers have to take care of events with no public market analogues for traditional investors (e.g. custodianship, airdrops, staking, hard forks) too.
Investors need to bet on assets with local maxima of value and evaluate trade offs between censorship resistance, expressivity, throughput, latency, scalability, governance, privacy etc.
Privacy is a not a good selling point for cryptocurrencies (compared to speed, low fees, security, decentralization etc), because:
1) Most people seem to value convenience over privacy
2) Public tolerance for forfeiting some privacy is high
/0
Payment solutions are sticky.
As long as existing alternatives provide easier user experience (e.g. Venmo, Paypal), educating the public about the importance of fungibility and privacy in crypto won't be enough to promote mass adoption of privacy coins
/1
Privacy is not binary.
Most people understand the value of day-to-day financial privacy from unknown parties (creepy stalkers), but are ok with a recognized company knowing their transaction histories (e.g. private transactions on Venmo). For most, Monero is an overkill.
/2