By Liam Bussell

It’s been a rough month for crypto-based businesses. China did it’s thing, we’ve talked about that in detail here. Or you can get a second opinion here.

Korea has implemented regulatory changes, overwhelmingly these are positive, but it has led to some jitters. Then suddenly up popped the old paragon of financial virtue Jamie “Diamond” Dimon to take a poke at crypto in general, not once, but twice 10 days apart. The jitters were back.

Oh, and apparently all crypto people are stupid according to Jamie. Of course, we didn’t get $25 Billion from TARP, so I guess we are stupid. But on the other side, we haven’t had a “London Whale” and the corresponding $6.2 Billion loss, so maybe stop with the ad hominem attacks?

It’s enough to make you think Mr. Dimon might be shorting the market.

Ok, this must be it, we thought. Maybe it’s safe to go back in the water. Haven’t we seen any horror movies?

Don’t Go In The Water!

Singapore led the way, cutting off 10 crypto-related companies from the banking network. While details are still coming out, the full list of ten companies hasn’t been seen by us yet. As the Singapore Fintech Association has 185 members, that’s 5% of them that just lost banking rights. It does make one wonder how interested Singapore is in becoming a Fintech Hub…

Also, the fact that 3 different banks did it at pretty much the same time makes me think it may be more than a coincidence.

Of course, lemmings jump of cliffs in herds, so it was easy to see what seemed likely to happen. As The RoryShow commented here on Friday, Switzerland is thinking something is off, and it’s not the cheese. (Or is that France? Oh yeah, Switzerland is chocolate and cuckoo clocks!)

Of course, bad news comes in threes (or so my grandma told me) Today we have new news, straight from Moscow.

When Elvira (Yeah, I know) says “loss of control” you know she means “boatloads of cash leaving our taxable jurisdiction.” But hey, for all the craziness of the last month, Bitcoin isn’t collapsing like the messed up souffle that is the ruble so maybe that’s keeping her up nights.

I’m a ruble, get me out of here!

So, where do we go from here?

There’s obviously an issue. It’s not just the reaction to the ICO bubble, or China crackdown, but a larger question around governments and banks are looking at the cryptocurrency market and seeing warning signs of speculation, overheating and the ever present worry about KYC and money laundering.

Fair enough too, is what I think. A writer I respect, BitCrypto’ed coined a new term the other day. In the current climate, blockchain projects that want to be sustainable and integrate with traditional financial markets need to be TAF.

Transparent As Fuck

Which leads me to where I’m going with all this.

Just when everyone was starting to catch their breath, Tether pulled out of World Blockchain Forum at the last minute, likely reacting to news that Kraken, one of their big U.S. channels, was having some issues with their banking. of course, Tether has been under fire a lot recently, no wonder they are developing a bit of a bunker mentality.

Give us our Dollars!

You can read some of the opinions of others smarter than myself below. Some people have doubts…and there’s more of them every day.

So, where does that leave us? If new money cannot effectively enter the market, that means new players entering are also facing some challenging barriers to entry. Unlike the wall that Trump wants to build, this obstacle could potentially threaten the growth of the industry.

We think that regulation will ultimately act as a good force, helping chase out bad actors, but only if the industry as a whole makes some effort to repudiate them. Best not to all get tarred with the same brush.

Nobody likes getting tarred, even if there’s feathers after

At OAX, we’ve been thinking a lot about this, which is why as we recruit for our Working Group we are talking to payments companies and KYC experts alongside potential Asset Gateways, and why we have prioritized a KYC/AML compliant fiat asset token as the first piece of the wider infrastructure puzzle we are trying to solve.

We think the time has come for the industry to take some steps on it’s own to grow up and put on it’s “Big Boy” pants.

The industry

Don’t forget our Development update AMA on our Slack 4th of October, details on our Twitter!

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