World Governments Taking Long Hard Look at Bitcoin

It’s a bad day for cryptocurrencies, reports note, as several major initiatives are in the works worldwide, targeting the speculative investment / potential new currency / potential global destabilizer platform. In recent days, word has come out about at least four different government efforts to start regulating cryptocurrencies and initial coin offering (ICO) efforts.

One such effort is set to come from the United States, where the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is planning regulatory efforts on cryptocurrencies, counting these as “subject to Federal Securities laws.” The SEC is hoping this measure will bring “…the essential facts behind any investment opportunity” to investors so that said investors can “…make fully informed decisions.”

Some here have noted that the SEC is under a very high level of budget scrutiny right now—like most every other agency post-Trump—and this could be a nice little dodge geared toward protecting a budget with a nice round of “see what we’re doing for the American People!” sort of initiative.

The SEC is far from alone on this, however; China and Japan have recently launched such regulatory moves of their own—remember that Japan is home to the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange events and the resulting legal matters that followed—and Australia joined the list itself within the last couple of days. Australia’s recent effort will seal up some loopholes in regulation and ultimately add digital currency operations to the Australian Transactions and Reporting Analysis Center (AUSTRAC) purview.

So what does this mean, exactly? Well, given that there are over 839 different cryptocurrencies in play right now—seriously, we’re up over 800 different types, from ArcticCoin to Tattoocoin to TrumpCoin to literally scads of others—it probably was a good idea to get something in here to thin out the herd. Granted, no one wants to miss “the next bitcoin”, where an investment of around two Papa John’s pizzas would turn into $40 million about seven years later.

While we can say that the market should do the shaking out instead of the government, it might not be a bad idea to have a couple speed bumps tossed in there just to shake out the biggest loonies. If someone can stick to the paperwork long enough to have a “proper” ICO, then maybe they’re worth talking about.