As the understanding that China has not been working to discourage innovation around Bitcoin sinks deeper, a top official of the Bank of Russia has come out to say that they will not take measures to prohibit Bitcoin use in their country.
While making the decision known, the Bank’s deputy chairman Olga Skorobogatov said they want to rather understand how to relate with the digital currency so as to build a regulatory framework for it.
This disclosure is somewhat in line with happenings in China since the country’s central bank, the PBoC, recently inspected three top Bitcoin exchanges.
BTCC has since announced it has suspended margin loan service followed by Huobi. In another vein, the CEO of OKCoin, Star Xu, has reportedly established that the reported use of Bitcoin for capital flight out of China has been deemed purely imaginary based on constant price difference between China and West over a long time.
These moves by exchanges could be to help tackle a major challenge facing the trading platforms, , according to Zhao Dong of Jiandong Tech which buys and sells Bitcoin, which is having to prove themselves innocent because many investors accuse them of inside trading or market manipulation.
What is clear though is what some industry insiders suggest that the recent shakeup in the Chinese market might put an end to fake Bitcoin figures being generated by exchanges. It could also lead some of the traders that can’t cope out of China for other free fee trading platforms in countries like Japan.
Attention is now shifting to Japan where Bitcoin-accepting merchants are projected to exceed 20,000 by the end of this year following the result of a survey that shows their number has increased by more than four times in the last twelve months to be about 4,200.
Japan presently tops the USA as the second spot market for Bitcoin after China.
Hopefully, the situation may change in the USA after Donald Trump ascends into office as US president with his considered appointment of a few Bitcoin-friendly officials (Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan and Congressman Mick Mulvaney) into his cabinet. In general, the Trump administration is being debated to mean something positive for the Bitcoin market especially the pending decision to approve the Bitcoin exchange traded fund ETF.
After several deliberations, the outgoing US government has pushed the two decisions on ETFs as scheduled by the US Security Exchange Commission to dates – March 11 (for the Winklevoss’) and March 17 (for SolidX) – that fall under the Trump administration.
The approval of either ETF has been projected to surge Bitcoin prices after it is estimated to likely attract $300 million into the market in its first week of launch.
With the recent adoption of blockchain — the technology introduced to the world by Bitcoin – by Wall Street bankers as a first step to move a significant piece of financial infrastructure, the development may impact the decision to approve the ETF which has been postponed twice.
However, with this lineup of interconnected happenings coupled with news of central banks working to come up with their own digital currencies, Bitcoin’s global outlook seems quite promising and going in a direction that would impact users in various countries especially now that there are reports that gold has been getting less attention because of Bitcoin.