Facebook, Telegram currency blocked: regulatory demise and possible opportunities

Source: Blockchain Learning Society

Author: area Columbia

First, the expectations and indifference of the public

The Telegram issue has attracted much attention for its over $100 million in over $1 billion in financing.

Telegram Open Network (TON) is the result of the Telegram team in the blockchain field. Telegram's instant messaging tool with more than 200 million users will be the first DAPP on the TON network, and maybe even the largest DAPP.

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The reason why it has received wide attention is that Telegram is expected to bring much-needed incremental users to the blockchain, and the blockchain is mainstreamed by a large number of users.

Volkswagen is also expecting the Libra issued by Facebook. Of course, this is only the expectation in the blockchain field. People outside the blockchain field may be indifferent to this, and even the regulators outside the field are all hopeful. Can kill Libra in the womb.

Second, the supervision of the decision

The blockchain is called the value Internet by many people. It is precisely because the value can be freely circulated in the blockchain, but it is difficult to be blocked, and certainly some value transfer is difficult to be accepted by the regulators, such as some illegal things.

Therefore, the blockchain must be subject to supervision. Otherwise, it will be extremely difficult to be accepted and popularized on a large scale. The influence of the government on the public must not be underestimated.

Since Telegram can be banned by Russia, it can also be blocked by other countries. It has only been blocked for those countries, or the degree of influence is still relatively small.

Therefore, after the SEC initiated the lawsuit against TON, the Telegram or TON team, which is famous for its opposition to supervision, did not have any intention of not cooperating with supervision, but was very eager to express its willingness to comply.

The SEC filed a lawsuit in court, demanding that the court temporarily and permanently prohibit TON from violating the securities laws, prohibiting the issuance of digital asset securities, returning illegal income and interest, and paying fines.

This is a rather harsh lawsuit. It is not just a matter of paying for EOS, but asking for a ban on the issuance of tokens. Of course, this may also be related to the fact that its tokens have not entered the market on a large scale.

Third, the obstacles of many countries

From the strong regulatory pressure faced by Facebook and the ban imposed by Telegram, we can clearly perceive that the pressure on the project with a large user base is likely to be unprecedented.

A16Z partner Chris Dickson suggested that Libra give up the idea of ​​a basket of currencies, anchoring only the dollar, and only paying attention to the matter to ease regulatory pressure.

Libra is now anchoring a basket of currencies at 50%, 18%, 14%, and 11% and 7% Singapore dollars, and if only the US dollar is anchored, it may ease regulatory pressure on the US. And thus advance faster.

But in fact, the truth is the same. It only anchors the US dollar. It only solves the domestic regulatory pressure. Even if it can be implemented smoothly in the United States, other countries still have a lot of resistance. It may not be any country except Venezuela that has given up monetary sovereignty. Countries with monetary sovereignty will be willing to let another currency circulate in the country, and it is difficult to supervise or stop it.

Therefore, even if only the US dollar is anchored, it is still difficult to change the heavy resistance it faces. Germany, the European Union, etc. will still not change its negative attitude towards Libra.

And when French President Mark Long hosted the annual diplomatic envoy meeting at the end of August, he stressed that the EU wants to reshape sovereignty, the part on economic and financial sovereignty, which emphasizes:

I am not saying that we must fight the dollar, but that we need to establish a real "euro sovereignty." Moreover, in the establishment of digital currency sovereignty, Europe also needs to rethink, because digital currency will also affect future economic sovereignty.

It can be seen from the EU that at least France wants to reshape monetary sovereignty and emphasizes the sovereignty of digital currency. It believes that digital currency will also affect future economic sovereignty.

I don't talk about the digital currency sovereignty here. Just from the attitude of wanting to reshape monetary sovereignty, we can see that countries with monetary sovereignty can never allow Libra's similar digital currency with a large audience to become popular.

Blockchain projects generally have international characteristics, which also means that they face multiple regulatory pressures in different countries.

Fourth, the possible opportunity window

For the giant hair coin with a large number of users such as Facebook and Telegram, the blockchain industry is of course warmly welcome, which may be a headache for regulators.

Blockchain as an emerging industry, various regulatory measures are not perfect, the legal system is close to zero, and naturally has the characteristics of counter-regulation, it is better to say that it is a project that covers hundreds of millions of users. Is the organization really affected?

From now on, it can be found that no institution with a large number of users has achieved tokenization. Perhaps there was no such thing as a big institution in the past, but now there are big institutions that want to do this, but regulation may also hinder it. do.

Without proper regulatory conditions, it is difficult for regulators to allow this emerging economy with great uncertainty to emerge because the nature of the blockchain itself is not regulatory-friendly.

As for why the regulators in other countries did not come out.

On the one hand, many countries may have a lot of messes to deal with, and this is not very relevant. However, if the correlation is relatively high, it will also be banned. For example, in the Libra incident, the supervision of major countries has been clearly carried out. Negative statement.

On the other hand, the SEC is indeed more active in this area, and it is extremely energy-intensive, and it is difficult for large projects to bypass the United States unless the participation of Americans is completely banned.

At present, the supervision system is basically absent. Many countries are still in a wild stage, and the supervision power is weak. Once the supervision system is perfect, the blockchain project is bound to face more compliance costs and regulatory resistance.

With the improvement of the regulatory system, the cost of compliance will inevitably become higher and higher. This may be very serious for organizations with large-scale projects. It may need to do compliance work in many countries, so at this stage for large organizations. Said may be a good window period.

The blockchain wants to be mainstream and accepted on a large scale, and there are still many difficulties. Nowadays, the blockchain is seriously stigmatized, the threshold of cognition is extremely high, the difficulty of product landing, the lack of user use, and the uncertainty of supervision are all important obstacles that hinder the blockchain from being accepted on a large scale.

We expect the blockchain industry to usher in a broken moment as soon as possible. Just like Bitcoin, I rely on the moment to welcome the blockchain.

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Disclaimer: This article is the author's independent point of view, does not represent the position of the Blockchain Institute (Public Number), and does not constitute any investment advice or suggestion , the image source network .

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