• The digital currency plunge to $5, 640, hitting the lowest price record of the year according to Coindesk price data.

Other cryptocurrency markets also suffered unusual losses, Ether (ETH) fell as much as 13 percent while Ripple (XRP), the third largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization dropped 15 percent. This downtrend movement took place as most of the cryptocurrency market also suffered notable losses,  declining from a total value of $210 billion earlier in that day to almost $180 billion by approximately 15:30 UTC according to CoinMarketCap.

To explain things for what reason did this drop happened, practically due to an upcoming hard fork of another cryptocurrency "Bitcoin Cash (BCH)" according to founder and CEO of BKCM, Brian Kelly.

"When you do a software upgrade, everybody usually agrees. But in this particular case, everybody is not agreeing."  Kelly added and a "civil war" followed. Traders are concerned that bitcoin and bitcoin cash markets would run into a slowdown or "chaos" after the software upgrade (hard fork).

"People started selling. That triggered stops. Everybody got concerned," Kelly explained. "And that's what happened today — the entire crypto-market sell down." Kelly expects it to be a "very short-term" event.

To sum up, there are three reasons for this drop-down event according to CNBC, its because of;

• Bitcoin cash Hard fork
• Crypto civil war in full swing
• Short-term selling event.

This is the news that was put listed by the Asia Blockchain and Crypto Association. They are also known as ABACA.

Everything You Need To Know About The Crypto Regulation

This new regulation by Philippines' Cagayan Economic Zone Authority; prominently called CEZA has been drafted for diverse reasons. It will regulate the crypto industry and secure investors.

This regulation will affect problems such as crypto asset acquisition, utility token, and security tokens. The utility tokens offer its holders easy future access to either products or services provided through the company.

For the security tokens, they are supported by real time assets like equity and shares of a company. They are utilized in paying dividends, interests or investing in some other tokens.

This implies that CEZA will be transformed as the primary regulator. For ABACA, it has been nominated as the SRO.

This means it is a Self-Regulatory Organization. Its job consists of enforcing this new framework. Due to this release, every DATOs are expected to have adequate offering records.

This record will have in-depth details of both the issue and the project. They should also have accompanied advice and expert certifications. This SRO model will not only promote but also secure every interest of crypto investors.

Also, the tokens will have to be filed on the licensed OVCE. The OVCE is none other than the Offshore Virtual Currency Exchange. The set rules are actually split into three tiers. They include;

Tier One

This tier comprises of assets and investments that do not exceed $5 million made in the computerized tokens.

This tier basically covers a $6million to $10million range.

The various stakeholders are expected to have an affirmed arrangement. This arrangement will be executed with authorized wallet providers and the custodians. CEZA has also added to the set of rules.

CEZA stated that the partnership with financial technology industries and some of the establishment players would aid the government. They will help them attain in-depth knowledge and be updated with technology on the upcoming markets.

The set rules will stay rigid as it assesses not only the conducts but also the integrity of the companies interested in debuting DATOs. It is worth to note that CEZA has accepted and even circulated temporary principal OVCE. However, this release made does not make mention of ICOs.

ICO is an abbreviation for Initial Coin Offering. As mentioned above, the regulation does not mention anything on ICO.

PSEC, an abbreviation for Philippines Security and Exchange Commission has been talking about ICO for some time. PSEC also released some draft rules for governing ICOs back in August 2018.

According to the agency, companies registered in the country that are making plans to operate an ICO must, first of all, submit an initial assessment request.

It does not matter if their token will be a security token or not. The addressing request must be submitted to the commission.

Wrapping It Up

It should be noted that CEZA has issued the offshore virtual currency exchange to a total number of nineteen companies. And, these companies are also connected to the Blockchain industry and its general ecosystem.

Due to the growing popular demand of virtual currencies in the country, the Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) continues to speak about the risk of being involved in using cryptocurrency. While the technology is being restricted in some countries, BSP Deputy Governor stated that the technology behind this virtual currency can be useful for payments and can even bypass the current banking system.

Blockchain and general forms of distributed ledger technology can be useful for payment and settlements for peer-to-peer transactions and therefore could potentially bypass the banks and banking system in general .
BSP Deputy Governor Diwa Guinigundo said.

Being one of the friendliest countries towards cryptocurrencies, the value of transactions involving virtual currencies in the country almost doubled from $189.18 million in 2017 to $390.37 million last year according to the latest data of the BSP’s Technology Risk and Innovation Supervision Department.

The BSP approaches these new forms of technology based on regulatory sandboxes that would allow the regulator to balance encouraging technology innovation with a robust solution and consumer protection.
Guinigundo said.

The conversion of Philippine Peso to other cryptocurrencies for payments and remittances with $208.27 million. And the conversion of virtual currencies to Peso and other currencies with $173.33 million through approved crypto exchanges in the country.

The BSP so far approved approximately of 10 registrations of cryptocurrency exchanges in the country.

Source: Philstar

Running a full bitcoin network does not mean mining bitcoin.  Phil Chen, the chief decentralized officer at HTC said.

This smartphone also has a built-in hardware wallet to help its users stored their cryptocurrency assets securely. It appears with 4 GB of RAM and 63 GB of storage and runs on Android Oreo 8.1. This allows its users to install a 400+GB SD card to expand its storage allowing it to cope with the increasing data of the full bitcoin ledger, the bitcoin blockchain. The current size of the full ledger is closing on 250 GB, according to Blockchain chart block size. 

“Full nodes are the most important ingredient in the resilience of the Bitcoin network and we have lowered the barrier to entry for any person to run a node,” Chen added.

The smartphone will be available for users in Europe, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE initially, while other regions such as Taiwan, Switzerland, and Germany will be launched at a later date while it's currently not prepared for sale in the U.S.

Mentioning its price is about $244 (€219) which is lower than the price of HTC's flagship the HTC EXODUS 1. 

Featured image via Theusbport.com