RIYADH: The US authorities are concerned over the mushroom growth of financial startups effectively creating an alternative banking system.
One of those startups is BlockFI. The Jersey-based financial startup aspires to be the JPMorgan Chase of cryptocurrency. It not only offers credit cards, loans, and interest-bearing accounts but is also exploring new horizons in the world of cryptocurrency instead of primarily dealing in dollars.
“We are only at the beginning of this story,” said Flori Marques, founder of BlockFi. He also claims to have more than $10 billion in assets, 850 employees, and more than 450,000 retail customers that can get loans within minutes, without a credit check.
In other parts of the world where digital coins are becoming popular, people are expressing concern. While bitcoin became legal tender in El Salvador within three days, a survey by the University Institute of Public Opinion showed that seven out of 10 Salvadorans want the government to repeal the bitcoin law.
According to the institute, a total of 1,281 respondents aged 18 or over took part in the national survey. Of all respondents, 62.4 percent said they were aware that the current legislative assembly approved the bitcoin bill on June 9.
Within this group, 70 percent indicated that they either disagree or strongly disagree with the government on the bitcoin law while 30 percent agreed or strongly agreed.
It also showed that about 70 percent of all the participants have an inaccurate idea of what bitcoin is, and 20.6 percent do not know anything about bitcoin. “Only 4.8 percent correctly identify it as a cryptocurrency,” Bitcoin.com reported.
Fraud
In Russia, unknown scammers organized a bogus giveaway of bitcoins via a Russian government website that they had hacked.
News of the attack came after a recent report revealed that damages from crypto-related fraud in Russia amounted to $30 million in the first half of this year.
Regulation
While in India, the government plans to regulate cryptocurrencies as commodities.
The Economic Times reported: “The government plans to define cryptocurrencies in the new bill which also proposes dividing virtual currencies on the basis of their use cases.”
Market update
Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, traded lower on Sunday, falling by 0.01 percent to $50,224.85 at 4:51 p.m. Riyadh time while Ether traded at $3,942.45 up by 0.77 percent, according to data from Coindesk.
