IMF Signals Need For International Regulation, IOTA Launches Fund And More…

Today’s Crypto Story

The IMF no longer considers crypto a fringe asset class and is now exploring the need for international regulation on cryptocurrencies. IMF Chief Christine Lagarde stated crypto regulation is “inevitable.” It seems that the IMF would focus its efforts on regulating activity vs. specific entities. This seemingly to echoes the sentiment at the U.S. congressional hearings last week, where it appeared U.S. regulators did not want to harm the technological revolution that cryptocurrencies could enable.

The comments from the IMF also echo Germany’s call for governments to unite and regulate cryptocurrency on a global scale. Decentralized assets certainly pose new challenges for central banks, but their recent acceptance to broadly regulate vs. ban cryptocurrencies has been a pleasant surprise for crypto purists. If this trend continues we expect institutional investors to significantly increase their positions in cryptoassets.

Today’s Coin News

IOTA, the most dominant cryptocurrency focused on powering the internet of things, has announced the launch of a platform to fund and foster new development on it’s Tangle based distributed ledger architecture. Dubbed the IOTA ecosystem, the framework is focused on bringing together developers, startups, and general IOTA users to create open sourced DLT applications to be built on the platform.

Making all of this possible is the Ecosystem Development Fund (EDF), created when members of the IOTA community donated what was at the time valued at roughly $200,000 (now worth nearly $40MM) to fuel the venture. Projects will be proposed to the fund, where the broader IOTA community will then be able to vote via the Tangle on which projects to support. The EDF plans to develop a system that gauges trustworthiness of Ecosystem contributors dictated by the broader IOTA community that will keep the integrity of fund recipients transparent. Finally, the EDF will impose a system of metrics meant to gauge the efficacy of different initiatives so that voting members can more accurately dictate the future path of the EDF

Notably, the Ecosystem will contain a number of free resources to help foster development. The idea behind all of this is not dissimilar to the functionings of Dash, which contains a voter based fund disbursement platform to allow for new ventures. Given the far reaching prospects for an IOT enabled future, it makes a lot of sense for IOTA to be investing in the scalability of their platform. If the endeavor proves to be successful, there may be a coming flurry of new IOTA implementations hitting the market, with an ever appreciating wealth fund to push ever more projects into the limelight.

Today’s Market Insight

Government acceptance of cryptocurrency and blockchain has taken a surprising turn with regulation seemingly light (compared to what could have been) and governments around the world embracing crypto companies. Just this week the NEM team met with SmartDubai, the VeChain team met with the Prime Minister of Belgium, and Ripple has continued to integrate with banks across the world — most recently with UAE Exchange in Abu Dhabi.

Light regulation and direct relationships between crypto companies and governments lends new credibility to the crypto market. Just a few months ago these types of developments would have been shocking, but as governments seek to hop on the blockchain bandwagon they are realizing that in many cases this means directly working with crypto projects. While many governments are still creating regulatory policies, Gibraltar just recently released a framework for ICO regulation, in which it seems their desire to impose deep regulations on specific companies is minimal. As alluded to the by IMF Chief Christine Lagrade, the global attitude is shifting towards questioning what cryptocurrency is and whether it should be banned a towards how do nations remove nefarious actors and create regulations that promote growth.

These types of developments will not only lead to more investment in the space but ultimately increase the rate at which we see real world use cases take root around the world.

To speak with Abacus regarding ICO strategy and crypto markets research contact david@theabacus.io.