Crypto Penetration blog 🔩

🇦🇲 Armenia will ban cash operations with crypto 🏛 This October, the Armenian parliament is discussing the first crypto bill in its history. As part of the country's aspirations to join the European Union, legislation in the field of finance is being harmonized. Currently, crypto exchange with cash is very developed in Armenia. 💬 The Government and the Central Bank promise to end this practice, introduce VASP licensing, and monitor cryptocurrency transactions. Exchange for cash will be prohibited. However, all these changes are planned only from 2026.

🇺🇸 Investigation against Tether 💸 The US Treasury department is investigating Tether and may impose sanctions on the company. The investigation is related to the possible use of USDT in drug trafficking and financing of terrorism. 🧐 Previously, partnership with Tether was important achievement for TON ecosystem development. However, I think that according to size of Tether's operations with US dollars, US regulators won't do much damage to the company. It's only investigation for now.

🗺 Can emerging countries become the crypto leaders of tomorrow? 🕉 Global GDP distribution is slowly changing, with a decreasing share for G7 countries - as you can see from PWC forecast - The World in 2050 and a growing share for BRICS, E7 and other emerging markets. Also most of emerging countries from PWC forecast (Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Nigeria, Philippines, Brazil, Turkiye, Mexico) are called by Chainalysis in its Global Crypto Adoption Index 2024. This is an important point in understanding which countries will be leading crypto markets in the future. We can divide large emerging economies into 3 groups according to their crypto regulations: 🇹🇷 🇧🇷🇲🇽 🇿🇦 Countries that already have high adoption of crypto and good regulation: Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Türkiye. Moreover, these are some of the easiest jurisdictions to set up VASP activities in the world. In Brazil, VASPs don’t need any license and SA has already registered about 200 entities, giving them official approval for crypto business. 🇮🇳🇵🇭🇮🇩🇳🇬 India, Philippines and Indonesia already have crypto regulations, although they are tough for crypto business. Besides that, these are large and growing economies with high demand for virtual assets. Nigeria is migrating into this group with its adoption of new licensing procedures for crypto entities and releasing Binance executive, Tigran Gambaryan this week. 🇻🇳🇨🇳🇭🇰 Vietnam has no crypto regulations right now, but plans to regulate in 2026. China has a formal crypto ban. However, SAR Hong Kong is a world leader in cryptocurrency regulation and has launched a Bitcoin ETF second only to US offerings. ✈️ The lion's share of users of Telegram and the TON ecosystem are located in these countries. And if we look ahead a few years, the share of these countries in global GDP and in the crypto market will increase significantly - as the importance of TON ecosystem may also grow.

🇮🇳 India prepares (another) crypto ban? 📝 Indian regulators were to publish a discussion paper on crypto policy in September. The document has not been published yet. However, according to the Hindustan Times, the government may ban Bitcoin, USDT and other cryptocurrencies. ❌ Instead, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and other regulators want to develop a national digital currency - a CBDC. The purpose of the ban is to address possible risks connected with crypto, such as avoiding taxes, money laundering and others.

🔃 Crypto regulation on emerging markets in 2024 🌏 The two most populous continents—Asia (59.5%) and Africa (18.93%)—still have relatively weak procedures for regulating cryptocurrency transactions. A number of Asian countries (Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc.) and half of African countries do not regulate crypto in any way. In North African countries, Pakistan and Bangladesh, cryptocurrency circulation is simply prohibited. 🐘 But there are several landmark emerging markets making notable progress in 2024: 🇮🇩 Indonesia 🇹🇭 Thailand 🇿🇦 South Africa 🇹🇷 Turkiye 🇹🇼 Taiwan 🇳🇬 Nigeria 🌻 Even where there is a conservative approach to regulation, there are big moves with licensing and legalization of crypto: including VASPs, ETFs and taxation. Get more crypto regulation insights in this article.

🔝 Uptober is here! 📈Bitcoin continues to respond positively to the ECB rate cut and other monetary stimuli. This comes on the back of a rising stock market in the US. ⛲️ BTC's price has risen from $62,000 to $69,000 this week. An extremely large amount of liquidity has gone to the US Bitcoin ETF ($2.12 billion for the week).

🔺 Bitcoin > $65,000 📈 Since the middle of last week, the crypto market finally went up. Bitcoin pushed back from the $60,000 level and even broke the $67,000 mark today. US Bitcoin ETFs demonstrate good numbers, with inflows of $253 mln last Friday and $555 mln this Monday. Currently these are maximum inflows for October. 📊 Nevertheless, I believe the sideways move will continue. The upward movement is happening as part of the global financial market reaction to China's stimulus program. But until the next Fed rate decision and the US presidential election, it is unlikely to expect a strong continuation of crypto market growth.

🇹🇷 Türkiye postpones crypto tax ☂️ Recently, Türkiye's Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz has officially declared the postponement of crypto tax. The reason for this decision is the collapse of the country's stock market. In the summer, the government planned to introduce a tax on profits from transactions with shares and cryptocurrencies but, after the fall in the stock market, the plans were changed. ⤴️ Also this year, Türkiye legislated licensing rules for crypto exchanges and other VASPs. They can be considered quite lenient - previously there were fears about a possible ban for foreign exchanges. However, these exchanges will be able to continue operations after registration. The adoption of crypto regulation was one of the FATF conditions to remove Türkiye from the gray list. Now, Turkish residents and companies operating there will be less closely examined by banks. 💸 Nevertheless, it's too early to be happy about this decision. Türkiye is a very unpredictable country, both is the exchange rate of the national currency and in the government's attitude to cryptocurrencies. The introduction of the crypto tax is possible next year.

VPN & mobile service for TON ✈️ The TON ecosystem continues to develop more and more opportunities for users. One of them is the ability to pay for eSIM and VPN in crypto. 📲 @Mobile is a new service, where you can pay for eSIM with TON, USDT and BTC in your Telegram Wallet. 🔐 The Mobile VPN service maintains your privacy on the internet and Telegram. If you travel or need tools for international communication, you need an eSIM. 😎 You can try it already today!

🇸🇨 One of the major crypto offshores has introduced new regulations 📅 On September 1st, the VASP Act came into force in the Seychelles, which is a very popular offshore zone for crypto operations. The Seychelles were for a long time a super-simple jurisdiction to set up a company for crypto operations without unnecessary restrictions. These were mostly offshore exchanges, including cases of scam projects. 🛂 Now the regulatory regime of the island nation has moved closer to the Caymans and the British Virgin Islands. All cryptocurrency companies operating in the Seychelles are required to register as VASPs by December 31 this year. 🗒 It has also become mandatory for crypto companies to have a physical presence on the island. Among other things, companies must now: - have a physical office, - employ a minimum of two managers - not engage in mining activities; mixers are also prohibited from operating ✅ The new law is likely to have a positive impact on crypto entities operating in the country as their activity will become more transparent. The adoption of legislation for crypto business worldwide is inevitable.

🔩 Major wallet has integrated TON 👛 Ledger Live - the online wallet dedicated to Ledger - added TON and NOT. The hardware version integrated TON back at the end of last year. ✈️ By the way, this happened just in time for Pavel Durov's birthday. The Telegram founder turned 40 years old on 10 October. Congratulations!

❓Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? 🎥 Authors of the HBO movie have recognized developer and member of the Bitcoin Foundation Peter Todd as the creator of Bitcoin. Other popular versions are Nick Szabo, Hal Finney, and Len Sassaman. Of course, this is most likely not true, also because Peter Todd is alive, and we haven't had any signs of activity from the real Satoshi since 2011. And he's pretty much 100% dead. 💸 Given the intense scrutiny of even small early BTC holdings by researchers, special forces, and criminals, the real Satoshi Nakamoto would have been uncovered long ago if he was alive. Or at least would sell some Bitcoin - there is little doubt about that.

💱 Stablecoin market and Tether FUD 🎤 Tether’s CEO, Paolo Ardoino gave an interview to Cointelegraph amid the delisting of USDT from European exchanges and circulating rumors about the company's issues. In the face of competitive pressure, even a giant like Tether needs to reassert its position in the market. 🤑 Stablecoins are attracting more and more attention with their high levels of profit: the USDT issuer earned $6,3 billion in 2023, $700 million more than BlackRock. The company has also surpassed VISA and Mastercard in transaction volume. Against this backdrop, Revolut and PayPal are creating their own stablecoins, while VISA is developing solutions to transfer cryptoassets via Swift. 🇺🇸 Tether is still the leader, but there is some distrust in the company, due to the low level of transparency of reserves. Paolo Ardoino probably decided to dispel these doubts and, during the interview, noted that Tether has a good relationship with the US government - working closely with the FBI and other intelligence agencies- and at the same time storing $98 billion in US Treasuries. That's comparable to the reserves of major economies like Brazil. 🗺 From this interview, we can also highlight the reason why USDT has not yet received a license in the EU: the company is focused more on markets in Asia and other countries where the demand for the dollar in digital form is higher and less focused on over-regulated markets such as the EU. As Ardoino said: “'There is no point for us to compete in the US and Europe. Our focus has to be where we are needed the most.“ 🎓 In my opinion, for Tether, a lower level of transparency is a necessary business approach to reduce business costs and protect against competitors. So there is no real threat for USDT now. However, no one prevents users from reinsuring themselves and transferring part of their reserves to other stablecoins, such as USDC. Futhermore, Tether is developing its business with TON ecosystem. Currently $768 mln of USDT is available on TON blockchain and its transaction fees are lower than on Tron.

📊 Volatility is decreasing... 🗺 The panic associated with geopolitical factors has calmed a bit and BTC is back above $60,000. Coinbase analysts record a significant decrease in volatility in anticipation of a new Fed rate decision in November and the results of the U.S. presidential election. 🇺🇸 In general, the crypto market is hovering in a sideways trend and the regulators' rate cuts are not leading to a new bull cycle yet, nor is there a strong fall due to recession fears - regulators are taking action. It is likely that this situation will last until the US presidential election.

🌏 Taiwan has started VASP registration and other regulatory news in Asia 🇹🇼 The main financial regulator in Taiwan published VASP registration rules yesterday. 🏯 Currently, Asia is the largest crypto market in the world and some other countries have new regulation updates too: 🇮🇩 There is a great move in Indonesia: Tokocrypto, Binance's local subsidiary, received its license in September. 🇮🇳 India is expected to publish a new concept of crypto regulation by the end of October. 🇭🇰 Hong Kong unveiled new rules for OTC trading. 🇹🇭 Thailand's second-largest bank, Kasicornbank, will launch the first licensed crypto custodian in the country. Thailand already legalized Bitcoin ETFs this year, following Hong Kong's example.