Week in Review: Thankfully Satoshi Is Anonymous

The cryptocurrency sector has witnessed presidential elections before, but none of them have been as effective as this. With Trump’s campaign, whether we wanted it or not, we became one of the main topics of this political competition. When there is an element of competition, you somehow get involved in every area of ​​politics. We saw 2 examples of this last week.

I think the most important thing was Vitalik writing about the elections. Although Vitalik is active on his own blog, he has always limited this section to technological issues. I think the consolidation of the sector behind Trump does not represent his personal opinion, so he felt the need to write about the elections. He wrote an article questioning how logical it is to vote for a candidate just because he supports cryptocurrencies and whether he really does. What is important here is not whether Vitalik is right or not. Being right is debatable anyway. No matter what Vitalik writes, some will like it and some will oppose it, after all, this is what we call politics. The important part here is the values ​​Vitalik represents. If Ethereum were a product of a company, if it were centralized, I think there would be no problem. However, a decentralized platform creates an important sense of belonging in addition to the financial values ​​it produces, because it is owned by the community. Vitalik is a person who constantly develops this sense of belonging and is taken as an example, whom we define as a genius. Therefore, being active in political areas is not limited to Vitalik’s personal opinion. Such views are inevitably associated with Ethereum. I think that’s one of the biggest disadvantages of being a celebrity; nothing stays personal.

In conclusion, I think the last thing you want for a technology to be intertwined with politics is for that technology. Technology needs to be for all of us, and it is a rather childish expectation to think that it is possible to appeal to everyone in politics. One of the biggest benefits of Satoshi’s anonymity is that Bitcoin can continue to maintain this inclusiveness no matter what. Because as long as Satoshi is not revealed, no one will be able to extract material from Satoshi’s views, identity or appearance, and will not be able to harm Bitcoin. Vitalik, on the other hand, is opening the door to a dangerous path towards criticism of Ethereum through such articles.

As for our second example, Messari CEO Ryan Selkis, despite being respected by everyone in crypto, accepted that he was harming the company due to his aggressive stance and tweets in favor of Trump and handed over his position to another founder, Eric Turner. It can be said that this is actually related to Vitalik’s topic. Ryan, like Vitalik, was someone who identified with his own product and naturally had users who used his product but did not support his views. For this reason, I think he made the right decision and stepped into the background. As I said, it is not about the views being right or wrong here, but about the inclusiveness of a product or technology not being reduced to a certain group.

Last week, the regulations approved last year in South Korea came into effect. Along with the law regulating service providers in general, exchanges are required to develop an infrastructure that will keep 80% of user assets in cold wallets, store cash in banks, organize insurance and rescue funds, and constantly monitor suspicious transactions. In short, it can be said that standards are set with a general framework similar to our law.

In Hong Kong, financial authorities were working on a special regulation for stablecoins. It was announced that the regulation was prepared with the opinions collected from the private sector after a period of 2 months.

A stablecoin regulation also came from the UAE. The UAE, which is quite active in the cryptocurrency field, with its headquarters in Dubai, has created a legal infrastructure by preparing a regulation for the creation of stablecoins with its own currency, the Dirham, and their integration into the existing payment infrastructure. Last week, the central bank also announced that it approved these regulations.

Following the news that Rho Market on the Scroll network was hacked for $7.5 million, a message was sent to the platform from the hacker. It was stated that the situation was not a hack, that a vulnerability originating from the platform’s oracle system was evaluated by the bot and the user assets were taken and the assets were wanted to be returned. However, the platform was asked to close this vulnerability beforehand. Rho Market also managed to get all the assets back after making the necessary arrangements. If it were not for the transparency of the blockchain, such processes would have happened through back doors in a way we do not know. It can be said that a kind of hack culture and style has been created.

Another hack took place on WazirX, one of India’s largest exchanges. According to Elliptic’s estimates, North Korea-based hackers managed to steal $230 million worth of assets.

Establishing an infrastructure similar to the app stores on our phones has long been one of the main goals of many cryptocurrency companies. However, the fact that these applications were newer and that their number and sustainability raised questions indicated that it was too early for such a study. With Telegram’s rapid and aggressive entry into the cryptocurrency sector, this situation reversed. The process that started with click-based games began to become a gradually spreading culture. When combined with Telegram’s wallet features, the business went from games to more comprehensive.

As the applications increased with the interest of entrepreneurs, it was decided to establish a mini app store within Telegram. Again, a search engine specific to crypto applications will be added to Telegram. Therefore, Telegram seems to be succeeding in establishing a crypto-specific App Store, which has been desired for a long time. It was also announced that a bridge will be established between Bitcoin and the TON network. This naturally shows that Bitcoin users, who hold the largest liquidity, will be able to quickly log in and out of Telegram. It is highly probable that these bridges will be diversified with other networks and the App Store initiative will be enriched.

There’s little time left to see if Ethereum ETFs will come true, as forecasts for the market launch on Tuesday, July 23 come true. Two state-owned banks in Italy, Cassa Depositi e Prestiti SpA (CDP) and Intesa Sanpaolo, have tokenized $25 million worth of bonds. The banks used Polygon’s infrastructure. BlockFi payments are starting this month.