US Lawmakers Propose New Legislation to Exclude Cryptocurrencies as Securities

Two Congressman for the United States have introduced a bill to exclude digital assets from being classified as securities.

Read more Regulation pieces here.

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On December 20th 2018, two United States congressman introduced a bill to the House of Representatives which wants to disregard digital assets as being defined as securities.

Representatives Warren Davidson (R) and Darren Soto (D) introduced the "Token Taxonomy Act of 2018" which seeks to exclude digital currencies being classified as securities. In order to do this, Reps. Davidson and Soto ask that Congress:

"...amend the Securities Act of 1933 and the SecuritiesExchange Act of 1934 to exclude digital tokens from the definition of a security, to direct the Securities andExchange Commission to enact certain regulatory changes regarding digital units secured through publickey cryptography, to adjust taxation of virtual currencies held in individual retirement accounts, to create a tax exemption for exchanges of one virtual currency for another, to create a de minimis exemption from taxation for gains realized from the sale or exchange of virtual currency for other than cash, and for other purposes."

The document goes on to outline that the Secretary of the Treasury must issue a set of regulations providing detailed information for returns on transactions in which gain or loss is accepted on digital currencies. 

 

Rep. Davidson further revealed plans to introduce new legislation in which a new "asset class" was created for cryptocurrencies and digital assets at the beginning of December. Davidson explained how this new law would:

 

"prevent them (cryptocurrencies) from being classified as securities, but would also allow the federal government to regulate initial coin offerings more effectively."

The bill is a follow-up to a Congressional table held by Davidson earlier in the year in which 45 representatives from Wall Street firms and companies built on cryptocurrency told explained to lawmakers that the lack of regulatory clarity for ICOs and digital currencies, with some arguing that regulations were simply "outdated."

Should this bill be accepted it would mark a huge turn in the regulation, classification and taxation of cryptocurrencies and digital assets in the United States.

Source: https://tokenmarket.net/news/regulation/us-lawmakers-propose-new-legislation-exclude-cryptocurrencies-securities/

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Analysing ERC20 activity accurately

The fact that ERC20 is nowadays the most widely used standard for smart contracts is a blessing in disguise. It allows the economy of tokens on the Ethereum blockchain to run fairly smoothly and enables many cross-contract behavior. But in most of the analyses that I have seen, there is a definite overconfidence in the standard.

If you read the definition of the ERC20 standard you will find something well written and quite straight forward. But you will most likely also overlook one small detail that can make the world of difference in analyzing some contracts. It is in the relationship between the transfer() and transferFrom() methods and the Transfer() event. Take a look at this transaction for example.

Tools like Etherscan consider that there were 1000 tokens transferred by this message call. But upon closer inspection the method is called “MassNotify”. It doesn’t sound like a transfer to me. So what happened there? Why does it seem that 1000 tokens were issued when it is not the case?

The answer lies in this little detail that is easily overlooked: Transfer() must be triggered by token transfers, but it could be triggered for other reasons too! The wording of the standard is the following:

MUST trigger when tokens are transferred, including zero value transfers.

In the contract above what is called “virtual tokens” are issued at will and accounts are “notified” about it using the Transfer() event. That means that they are entered in a list of accounts that may transfer up to 10 tokens, provided it does not make the general supply reach the fixed limit. But until they do so, nothing in the contract ensures that they do have a token to spend. Such virtual tokens could be generated ad infinitum and completely throw off analyses of ERC20 tokens. The issue here in the etherscan analysis is that they used the Transfer() event log to get the information, which at the present state of the standard is not reliable.

You could suggest that we only count transfer() and transferFrom() message calls, but that would be a mistake again. Indeed nothing in the ERC20 standard currently suggests that these methods can only be called externally, by a message call. One could be called internally, inside another method. For example one could have an ERC20 contract with a shuffleAccounts(n)method, making n random calls to transferFrom(). That would appear in the Transfer() logs but not be seen by the method described above.

I suggest that any analysis of ERC20 token activity be preceded by a review of the contract’s code generating a list of method calls to be cross referenced with. As for virtual tokens, there is no way to know the individual state of accounts before they make their first use of their virtual tokens. I propose that in this case, counts should be capped by the total supply.

Source: https://medium.com/@LeData/analysing-erc20-activity-accurately-b8181c40b06b

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Nace la primera asociación de blockchain en México

La Asociación Blockchain México, la primera institución de esta tecnología en el país, estará conformada por Bitso, Volabit, BIVA, GBM, Lvna Capital, ConsenSys y Exponent Capital.

“Esta tecnología tiene el objetivo de crear procedimientos más transparentes, seguros y eficientes”, afirmó Felipe Vallejo, presidente provisional de la Asociación Blockhain México.

Esta unión de organizaciones quiere educar a los ciudadanos en el uso de esta tecnología cuyas aplicaciones potenciales aún se desconocen.

Los integrantes también quieren asegurarse de que, antes de que se vuelva una herramienta masiva, se fijen unos estándares para un uso seguro y de calidad. Esto, con la intención de evitar malas prácticas a través del blockchain, como lavado de dinero.

“Las aplicaciones actuales del blockchain van desde la disminución de los costos de envío de remesas y pagos internacionales, hasta la democratización del sistema financiero”, explicaba el fundador de Exponent Capital, Mouses Cassab.

Inspiración y crecimiento

La Asociación Blockchain México se inspira en asociaciones que ya existen en otros países. Por ejemplo, el Congressional Blockchain Caucus, en Estados Unidos; el Cripto Valley, en Suiza, y e-Estonia.

Aunque la Asociación nace con siete integrantes, está abierta a cualquier entidad y organización que se quiera sumar. Esto es porque la tecnología blockchain se puede aplicar en todas las industrias.

“Tenemos ganas de generar un espacio de discusión y política publica. Queremos que todos puedan exponer sus ideas”, dijo la directora de BIVA, María Ariza.

 ¿Qué es el blockchain?

La tecnología blockchain funciona como un documento de Google o Google Doc.

Se trata de una cadena de información en la que todos los integrantes tienen acceso a los datos que se registran en el documento en la nube.

Esto permite que nadie quede ajeno de cualquier cambio que se produce en el proceso o acto registrado. Es más, no se puede introducir ningún cambio en los datos sin la autorización de todos los miembros de la cadena.

Un ejemplo sería el proceso de producción de zapatos. Con el blockchain, los compradores podrían ver todo el historial del proceso de producción de unas botas y comprobar que están hechas de piel sintética.

¿Qué se gana con esto? Confianza sin necesidad de que la intervención de un tercero, una agencia de control de calidad de productos, por ejemplo.

Esto es un cambio de lógica, porque hasta el momento, cuanto más cerradas eran las entidades, un banco, por ejemplo, más seguras eran.

En blockchain, la seguridad la garantiza la apertura de los datos a los ciudadanos.

Source: https://www.forbes.com.mx/nace-la-primera-asociacion-de-blockchain-en-mexico/

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