Observation | Digital currency is struggling to move forward amid regulatory pressure and international recognition

The U.S. SEC rejected the latest proposal to create a Bitcoin ETF. According to Tencent Securities, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) once again rejected a proposal to create a Bitcoin-backed ETF. The SEC said in a statement on Wednesday that the Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) proposed by Bitwise Asset Management and NYSE Arca did not meet standards to prevent fraud and market manipulation.

Visa and other three major payment giants and eBay collectively withdraw from the Libra project. On October 11, Eastern Time, the US e-commerce eBay and the three major payment giants Mastercard, Visa, and Stripe announced their withdrawal from the Libra Association, the management organization of Facebook's cryptocurrency Libra, saying that they respect the Libra project and see its potential, but choose to focus on other efforts.

The United Nations has established a cryptocurrency fund that can accept donations in Bitcoin and Ethereum; the campaign token MATH of Andrew Yang, the Chinese-American presidential candidate, will be officially released soon. On October 9, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) announced the establishment of a cryptocurrency fund that can accept, hold and spend donations in the form of "ether" and "bitcoin". This is the first institution in the United Nations system to launch a cryptocurrency fund. It is reported that Yang Dividend is Andrew Yang's support organization. The purpose of creating this organization is to promote Andrew Yang's presidential campaign and promote the popularization of cryptocurrency. The organization began researching The Andrew Yang Coin in August 2019 and released a smart contract in September 2019. According to the contract address, 3,141,592,653 MATHs have been issued so far.

Last week's market review: Chainext CSI 100 increased by 5.84%, with commercial finance performing best among the sub-sectors. From the perspective of sub-sectors, payment transactions, IoT & traceability, entertainment and social networking, commercial finance, infrastructure enhancement, storage & computing performed better than the Chainext CSI 100 average level, at +9.73%, +6.95%, +7.89%, +31.90%, +11.24%, +28.19% respectively, while basic chains, pure coins, and AI sectors performed worse than the Chainext CSI 100 average level, at +5.01%, +4.20%, +2.78% respectively.

Risk warning: uncertainty in regulatory policies, project technology progress and application implementation failing to meet expectations, and the occurrence of cryptocurrency-related risk events.

The U.S. SEC has rejected the latest proposal to create a Bitcoin ETF. According to Tencent Securities on October 10, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has once again rejected a proposal to create a Bitcoin-backed ETF. The SEC said in a statement on Wednesday that the Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) proposed by Bitwise Asset Management and NYSE Arca does not meet the standards for preventing fraud and market manipulation. The SEC said that "its opposition is not based on an assessment of Bitcoin or blockchain technology more generally, and whether Bitcoin has utility or value as an innovation or investment," but that "NYSE Arca has failed to fulfill its responsibilities under the Exchange Act and the Commission's business rules to demonstrate that its proposal complies with the requirements of Section 6(b)(5) of the Exchange Act, in particular, the rules of national securities exchanges 'designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative behavior.'"

Visa and other three payment giants and eBay collectively withdrew from the Libra project. On October 11, Eastern Time, the US e-commerce eBay and the three payment giants Mastercard, Visa, and Stripe all announced that they would withdraw from the Libra Association, the management organization of Facebook's cryptocurrency Libra, saying that they respected the Libra project and saw its potential, but chose to focus on efforts in other directions. According to Bloomberg and other media reports, eBay's statement expressed support for the Libra project, but said it would focus on the company's own payment products and no longer advance as a founding member of the Libra Association. A spokesperson for Visa said that Visa will continue to evaluate whether to join the Libra project in the future and make a final decision based on multiple factors. One of the factors for the decision is the ability of the Libra Association to fully meet all necessary regulatory expectations. Mastercard said that it will continue to focus on the company's own efforts to promote global financial inclusion, believe that such activities have the potential to bring benefits, and will continue to pay attention to Libra's efforts. Stripe said that it supports projects that allow online commerce to serve more people around the world. Libra has this potential. Stripe will closely track the progress of Libra and is open to cooperating with it in the subsequent stages of the Libra Association.

The United Nations has established a cryptocurrency fund that can accept donations in Bitcoin and Ethereum; the campaign token MATH of Andrew Yang, a Chinese-American presidential candidate in the United States, will be officially released soon. On October 9, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) announced the establishment of a cryptocurrency fund that can accept, hold and spend donations in the form of "ether" and "bitcoin". This is the first institution in the United Nations system to launch a cryptocurrency fund. UNICEF said that the funds of the fund will be used to fund open source technologies that can benefit children and young people around the world. The first donation will be made by the Ethereum Foundation through the UNICEF French National Committee. In addition to France, among all 33 national committees of UNICEF, the national committees in the United States, Australia and New Zealand also accept donations in the form of cryptocurrency. UNICEF said that the launch of the cryptocurrency fund is part of its application of blockchain technology. UNICEF and the World Food Programme jointly lead the United Nations Innovation Network to study the potential opportunities and risks of blockchain and other emerging technologies. UNICEF's cryptocurrency fund accepts donations and invests funds in the same cryptocurrency. The first cryptocurrency was invested in three institutions, namely Prescrypto, Atix Labs and Utopixar, which are mainly used for prescription tracking, matching investors and people in need of funds, and community tokens. According to Yang Dividend official news, the campaign token of Chinese-American presidential candidate Andrew Yang (Yang Anze) The Andrew Yang Coin (MATH for short) is about to be officially released, which means that MATH will become the first presidential campaign token. It is reported that Yang Dividend is Yang Anze's support organization. The purpose of creating this organization is to promote Yang Anze's presidential campaign and promote the popularization of cryptocurrency. The organization began researching The Andrew Yang Coin in August 2019 and released a smart contract in September 2019. According to the contract address, more than 3.1 billion MATHs have been issued.

The future potential of digital currency is unquestionable, but its path is bound to be full of obstacles, and moving forward amid regulatory pressure and international recognition will become the main theme.

The IRS has updated its cryptocurrency tax guidance for the first time in five years to address the issue of forked coins. The IRS issued additional guidance on the tax treatment of cryptocurrencies on the 9th, including a new IRS regulation and FAQs, in which the new regulations are intended to address common questions for taxpayers and tax operators regarding the tax treatment of a cryptocurrency hard fork. The Q&A addresses cryptocurrency trading issues for those who hold cryptocurrencies as capital assets. The new guidance addresses issues such as: tax-related liabilities caused by cryptocurrency forks, acceptable methods for valuing received cryptocurrencies as income, and how to calculate taxable income when selling cryptocurrencies.

Last week, BTC had 2.25 million new transactions, a slight increase of 0.2% from the previous month; ETH had 4.7 million new transactions, an increase of 8.6% from the previous month.

Last week, the average daily income of BTC miners was US$15.78 million, a month-on-month increase of 4.0%; the average daily income of ETH miners was US$2.55 million, a month-on-month increase of 2.5%.

Last week, the average daily computing power of BTC reached 96EH/s, a month-on-month increase of 3.7%; the average daily computing power of the ETH network reached 188.9TH/s, a month-on-month decrease of 0.5%.

Last week, the mining difficulty of BTC was 13.01T, a 1% increase from the previous month. The next difficulty adjustment date is October 24, and the estimated difficulty is 13.40T, a 3.01% increase. Last week, the average mining difficulty of ETH was 2.42T, a 0.3% increase from the previous month.

From the perspective of sub-sectors, payment transactions, Internet of Things & Traceability, Entertainment and Social Networking, Commercial Finance, Infrastructure Enhancement, Storage & Computing performed better than the Chainext CSI 100 average, at +9.73%, +6.95%, +7.89%, +31.90%, +11.24% and +28.19% respectively. The performance of basic chain, pure currency and AI sectors was worse than the Chainext CSI 100 average, at +5.01%, +4.20% and +2.78% respectively.