15th April 2023 - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommends that policymakers in member states should prefer regulating crypto to banning it. IMF staff regularly produces papers proposing new IMF policies, exploring options for reform, or reviewing existing IMF policies and operations. The following documents have been released and are included in this package:
• A Press Release summarizing the views of the Executive Board as expressed during its February 8, 2023 consideration of the staff report.
• The Staff Report, prepared by IMF staff and completed on January 4, 2023 for the Executive Board’s consideration on February 8, 2023.
The IMF’s transparency policy allows for the deletion of market-sensitive information and premature disclosure of the authorities’ policy intentions in published staff reports and other documents. Electronic copies of IMF Policy Papers are available to the public from http://www.imf.org/external/pp/ppindex.aspx
The IMF paper sets forth a framework of nine elements that can help members develop a comprehensive, consistent, and coordinated policy response. The nine elements—or policy actions—are:
1. Safeguard monetary sovereignty and stability by strengthening monetary policy frameworks and do not grant crypto assets official currency or legal tender status.
2. Guard against excessive capital flow volatility and maintain the effectiveness of capital flow management measures.
3. Analyse and disclose fiscal risks and adopt unambiguous tax treatment of crypto assets.
4. Establish legal certainty of crypto assets and address legal risks.
5. Develop and enforce prudential, conduct, and oversight requirements to all crypto market actors.
6. Establish a joint monitoring framework across different domestic agencies and authorities.
7. Establish international collaborative arrangements to enhance supervision and enforcement of crypto asset regulations.
8. Monitor the impact of crypto assets on the stability of the international monetary system.
9. Strengthen global cooperation to develop digital infrastructures and alternative solutions for cross-border payments and finance.
By adopting the framework, policymakers can better mitigate the risks posed by crypto assets while also harnessing the potential benefits of the technological innovation associated with it.
On the other side, we have a finance mogul Warren Buffett, one of the most successful investors in history, discussed bitcoin during an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box on April 12. As he has done in previous interviews, the business magnate likened bitcoin to a gambling scheme and chain letters he received as a child.
It is well known that Warren Buffett does not like bitcoin, and he once said that he wouldn’t buy all the bitcoin (BTC) in the world for $25. Buffett is also known for saying that bitcoin is “probably rat poison squared,” and during an April 12 interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, he reiterated his distaste for the leading cryptocurrency. During the interview, he summarized bitcoin as a “gambling token,” and he insisted that the world has seen an “explosion of gambling.” Warren said: "Bitcoin is a gambling token, and it doesn’t have any intrinsic value — but that doesn’t stop people from wanting to play the roulette wheel."
In the midst of Buffett’s gambling rhetoric, he also made a comparison to chain letters. Chain letters are messages that were commonly sent through snail mail, encouraging the recipient to forward the message to a certain number of people, promising that they would receive some sort of benefit in return. “I didn’t like chain letters when I was a kid,” Buffett explained to the CNBC show hosts. “I thought, ‘Why in the world would I send along a chain letter — when I could start my own?'”
While the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway clearly doesn’t like bitcoin, he is known for his aptitude for investing. Berkshire Hathaway owns several well-known businesses, such as Geico, Fruit of the Loom, Duracell, BNSF Railway, See’s Candies, Clayton Homes, Pampered Chef, and Dairy Queen. According to the latest data from companiesmarketcap.com, Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B) is listed as the eighth-largest market capitalization in terms of assets in the world. Bitcoin (BTC), on the other hand, is the tenth-largest market valuation worldwide according to the same website.
UK CRYPTO SCAMS - Here you may learn more about, how UK Shell Companies fuel "pig butchering crypto scams" - "A woman meets a man online. They flirt. Then, after a few weeks, they begin imagining a future together. Fast-forward a few months and one of them has been defrauded of their life savings. It sounds like a classic romance scam, but it isn’t. This is “pig-butchering”: a brutal and elaborate form of organized crime, often involving criminal syndicates, modern-day slaves and victims around the world. Since it rose to prominence in 2021, this method of fraud – which involves scammers grooming their targets before stealing huge sums in cryptocurrency – has fleeced victims of hundreds of millions of pounds and prompted warnings from Interpol and the FBI. Last month, an inquest heard that one UK victim, a former police officer and father from Wiltshire, took his own life after losing around £100,000 – his entire pension lump sum – in a scam bearing the hallmarks of pig-butchering. Now, an investigation by the Bureau and the Observer has found that organized crime groups are using the UK as a virtual base for their operations, exploiting lax regulation to carry out fraud on an industrial scale. Analysis has identified 168 UK companies accused of running fraudulent cryptocurrency or foreign exchange trading schemes, around half of which are likely to be linked to pig-butchering scams. Many of these firms are linked through domain registrations and while the vast majority of company directors are resident in China, details about the real owners are scant due to loopholes in the Companies House registration system."
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