CoinDesk Crypto

Bitcoin’s revived uptrend could soon lead to a much-anticipated breakout above the $20,000 mark, according to several analysts.

“We have witnessed a large move up over the weekend, with MicroStrategy’s efforts to increase bitcoin holdings from several large players bringing with it fresh optimism,” Matthew Dibb, CEO of Stack Funds, told CoinDesk. “Our belief is that we will see a breach of $20,000 in the coming weeks.”

On Friday, business intelligence firm MicroStrategy raised $650 million through a convertible senior note sale to fund bitcoin purchases. Since then, the cryptocurrency has rallied by over $1,000 and was last seen trading near $19,100, according to CoinDesk 20 data.

Related: MassMutual’s Bitcoin Buy May Presage $600B Institutional Flood: JPMorgan

Several public-listed companies, including insurance firm MassMutual, have forayed into bitcoin in the past couple of months, bolstering its appeal as “digital gold” and helping trigger a major price rally. The cryptocurrency nearly doubled from $10,000 to a new record high of $19,920 in the 12 weeks to Dec. 1, before falling to $17,700 last week amid a bout of profit taking.

Pullbacks are a normal element of bull markets and often recharge the engines for a bigger ascent. Further, the cryptocurrency looks to be following previous bull market patterns, as noted by Delphi Digital. The decline seen following the all-time high on Dec. 1 is reminiscent of the the 20% pullback seen following a similar move to a then-peak price of $1,200 in February 2017. That decline was short-lived and the cryptocurrency went on to chart a meteoric rally to $19,783 in December 2017.

Kenetic Capital’s CEO Jehan Chu also foresees bitcoin marching onward with “two steps forward, one step back” price action. “Those who missed the $17,600 dip may get another chance to buy, but likely at higher levels as bitcoin pierces the $20,000 ceiling,” Chu said.

The breakout, however, may remain elusive until the new year, as some investors are still looking to sell around record highs. “The topside is still kept with lots of selling orders, possibly from miners,” Patrick Heusser, head of trading at Zurich-based Crypto Broker AG, told CoinDesk over Twitter.

Related: Crypto Long & Short: Bitcoin’s Relationship With Gold Is More Complicated Than It Looks

Bitcoin struggled to keep gains above $19,000 earlier this month largely due to long-term holders liquidating holdings in fear of near-term sell offs.

Institutional demand could also wane toward the year’s end, weakening demand. “Don’t forget the Grayscale market is closed over Christmas … so no buying from institutions,” Heusser said. Grayscale is a digital asset manager owned by Digital Currency Group, the parent company of CoinDesk.

Mt. Gox risk?

Japanese exchange Mt. Gox ceased operations in February 2014 after announcing a fund loss of 850,000 BTC in long-term attacks. The deadline for a plan to distribute some 150,000 bitcoin back to investors is Dec. 15.

Some observers fear that if the distributions starts soon, recipients of the funds may cash in the 2500% return accrued over the 6.5 years the cryptocurrency has been locked up, possibly adding to downward pressure on the cryptocurrency’s price.

According to Stack’s Dibb, the deadline has been extended multiple times and could be delayed again. “However, if there is a decision, it will likely have an immediate and negative effect on the market,” Dibb said. “We are currently warning investors to brace for volatility ahead of the announcement.”

Kenetic Capital’s Chu doesn’t believe the Mt. Gox bitcoin it is a huge risk for the market. “The impending distribution could be worth as much as $2.8 billion at the current market price. That is just 10% of the daily volume,” he said.

So price dips, if any, could be short lived, especially as the likes of JPMorgan expect bitcoin’s mainstream adoption to gather pace next year.

Also read: Missed the Bitcoin Rally? Here’s a Low-Risk Strategy to Ride the Bull Market

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Sygnum, a digital asset finance firm with a Swiss banking license, has tokenized its shares on its own distributed ledger platform as it develops plans for a public offering.

• The firm said Monday that it has now become the first bank to use distributed ledger technology to issue digital representations of shares.
• For the issuance, Sygnum used its in-house developed Desygnate platform, which it said is compatible with a Swiss blockchain law coming into force from February 2021. The platform further associates the shares with their associated legal rights and obligations.
• The tokenization of shares provides investors with a “fully regulated, highly efficient and potentially more inclusive alternative” to traditional ways of raising capital, Sygnum said.
• The issuance lays the foundation for a potential dual listing of shares in Switzerland and Singapore in partnership with the SIX Digital Exchange.
• “We are excited to be the first bank in the world to tokenize our shares. This is an important milestone towards fulfilling our mission of creating more direct and efficient access to ownership and value,” said Mathias Imbach, Sygnum Bank’s co-founder and group CEO designate.

See also: SIX Stock Exchange Joins Venture Opening Up Digital Assets to Swiss Banks

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JPMorgan analysts have said the recent recent bitcoin purchases by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. are a sign of growing mainstream acceptance for the cryptocurrency.

• “MassMutual’s bitcoin purchases represent another milestone in the bitcoin adoption by institutional investors,” JPMorgan’s strategists said, according to Bloomberg on Monday.
• “One can see the potential demand that could arise over the coming years as other insurance companies and pension funds follow MassMutual’s example,” they added.
• On Thursday, the 169-year old insurance firm announced bitcoin purchases worth $100 million, as well as a $5 million equity stake in NYDIG – a financial services firm focused on bitcoin with $2.3 billion in the asset under management.
• MassMutual’s move suggests insurance firms and pension funds are beginning to look at bitcoin as an investment/reserve asset alongside increased demand from wealthy investors and family offices.
• According to JPMorgan, bitcoin may find an additional demand of $600 billion if pensions insurance firms in the U.S., EU, U.K. and Japan allocate 1% of assets to the top cryptocurrency.
• Regulatory hurdles, however, may complicate matters for such firms, limiting their participation in the bitcoin market, the strategists said.

Also read: Bitcoin’s Rising Popularity With Investors Means Gold Will ‘Suffer’: JPMorgan

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• Crypto Long & Short: Bitcoin’s Relationship With Gold Is More Complicated Than It Looks
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• Why a Massive 169-Year-Old Insurance Company Just Bought $100M in Bitcoin

A former governor of China’s central bank believes the digital yuan won’t upset the order of the global monetary system.

According to a report by the South China Morning Post on Sunday, Zhou Xiaochuan told attendees at the Shanghai Financial Forum that China’s digital currency electronic payment (DCEP) initiative shouldn’t be perceived as “great power chauvinism.”

Rather than threaten other nation’s currencies, DCEP will instead promote cross-border trade and boost the yuan’s international status, according to Zhou.

Related: SDX Chief Gets Philosophical About Crypto’s Swiss-Singapore Connection

“We are not like Libra and we don’t have an ambition to replace existing currencies,” he said, referring to the Facebook-initiated payments token that recently rebranded to Diem and is slated for launch early next year.

The DCEP is China’s proposed centralized digital payments system – an official yuan-pegged token to be issued by the People’s Bank of China (PBoC). While a number countries have begun exploring and developing central bank digital currencies, China’s efforts represent the most advanced effort to date from a major nation, with the potential to be used by billions of people.

The former PBoC governor also said if people were “willing,” the digital yuan could be used for trade and investment, but also flagged the sensitive nature and power of its utility on the world stage.

“Some countries are worried about the internationalization of yuan,” Zhou said. “We can’t push them on sensitive issues and we can’t impose our will.”

Related: 3 Chinese E-Commerce Giants Join Latest Digital Yuan Lottery Trial: Report

China, he continued, hopes to persuade consumers and overseas merchants to eventually accept digital yuan payments. The nation has learned from lessons the intense pushback from regulators and governments that Libra has seen since it was first proposed in 2019, Zhou said.

China’s DCEP would also offer an alternative to credit cards or payment services like Alipay and WeChat Pay. While those systems can already manage foreign exchange transactions, they are “often not real-time or transparent,” he said.

“If the currency exchange is realized at the moment of a retail transaction and there is oversight of that exchange … it brings new possibilities for interconnection,” Zhou said. With the digital yuan “the problem of cross-border remittances is easily resolved.”

See also: Proposed Chinese Law Outlaws All Yuan-Pegged Tokens – Except for Its CBDC

Edit (11:18 UTC, Dec. 14 2020): Corrected the former governor’s surname.

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Australia-based digital payments infrastructure provider Banxa is set to list on a Canadian stock exchange after being granted approval from local regulators earlier this month.

According to a report from the Australian Financial Review’s Street Talk, Banxa’s shares are expected to launch for trading on TSX Venture Exchange on Dec. 25, with a market cap of almost $50 million.

TSX Venture Exchange is the Canadian public venture capital marketplace for emerging companies. It’s operated by TMX group, which also owns and manages the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX).

Related: Crypto Remittances Prove Their Worth in Latin America

The listing is described as a world-first for this type of cryptocurrency company.

“Our TSX [Ventures] listing … will make Banxa the first crypto payment service provider to be listed in the world, bringing well-needed transparency and governance to the crypto sector,” founder and chairman Domenic Carosa said in the report.

The exchange listing follows on from a $2 million Series A funding round in January which undertaken to support the firm’s plans to expand into new markets.

Banxa provides “internationally compliant” fiat-to-crypto gateway services for crypto wallets and exchanges such as Binance, OKEx, Kucoin, Abra and ShapeShift, according to its website.

Related: US Treasury Wants Regulators to Watch for ‘Potential Risks’ in Digital Asset Innovation

See also: $76M Ether Fund Makes ‘World First’ IPO on Canadian Stock Exchange

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Fidelity Investments CEO Abby Johnson says the mutual fund giant’s custody business around bitcoin has been “incredibly successful” and has a “tremendous pipeline.”

In an interview with Barron’s, Johnson noted that developments in the sector are moving so rapidly it’s hard to keep track of them all and said that things that have long been talked about in the sector are now starting to become reality. The interview with Johnson can be watched here and start at the 22:30 mark.

Johnson also said:

• Fidelity, which began a bitcoin mining operation in 2016, has been working on connecting the legacy world with the future of cryptocurrencies. “Building those on and off ramps around facilitating the trading between fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies is something that’s happening now, and I’m glad it’s moving along,” she said. 
• “If you had asked me at the beginning, if we or anybody was going to be prioritizing custody of bitcoin I would have said ‘No way. I mean that’s kind of the opposite of what it’s all about.’ But the reality is that you do need it because if you’re an individual who engages an advisor and you want to make an estate plan you actually need someone to custody your bitcoin.”

Related: Fidelity Digital Assets Is Hiring More Crypto Engineers

Read also: Fidelity Report Says Bitcoin’s Market Cap Is ‘Drop in the Bucket’ of Potential

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No matter how it looks, swims or quacks, if the law says it ain’t a duck, then it ain’t one – The Michael Saylor Guide to Waterfowl Identification.

No, to our knowledge, Saylor, CEO of business intelligence firm MicroStrategy, has not written any such guide. However, if he did so, one can imagine an entry like this upending the famous “duck test” of observed reality that the poet James Whitcomb Riley is believed to have coined. 

It certainly captures the letter-of-the-law reasoning Saylor used on Twitter Friday evening to dismiss widespread speculation that his company’s recent massive purchases of bitcoin have turned it into an investment firm or even de facto bitcoin Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF). 

Related: Dispute Resolution Protocols Can Help Enterprise Adopt Blockchain

While some have argued that investors in Nasdaq-listed MicroStrategy (MSTR) are now effectively buying a regulated investment vehicle that gives them exposure to the leading cryptocurrency, Saylor turned to statute citations to argue that his firm nothing of the sort:

Since August, MicroStrategy has bought $475 million in bitcoin and the firm shows no sign of stopping. This past week, MSTR sold $650 million in convertible senior notes to raise funds to acquire even more bitcoin.

During the company’s bitcoin-buying binge, MSTR shares have more than doubled, as many investors saw holding shares of the company as a way to gain exposure to bitcoin, much like holding shares in an ETF gives one exposure to whatever asset the ETF is invested in. But with his tweets Friday, Saylor was essentially saying it doesn’t matter what those investors think. The words “in effect” make all the difference.

With his customary chutzpah Saylor is drawing a line in the sand by saying he thinks MSTR’s purchase of 40,824 bitcoin is merely the company choosing to hold its reserves in a currency other than U.S. dollars no matter how investors might view it or why they’re loading up on MSTR shares. No matter that Saylor, who controls 70% of MSTR’s shares, has been the biggest beneficiary of the stock’s bitcoin-fueled rise.

Related: LISTEN: Michael Saylor – Bitcoin’s Cyber Hornet – Most Influential 2020

By publicly referencing applicable law/rulings, Saylor may also be hoping to dissuade the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from revisiting its own work on waterfowl identification, a revisitation, which could lead to a different ruling on bitcoin and thus, changing species slightly, cook his goose.

See also: A De Facto Bitcoin ETF? MicroStrategy Is Raising $400M to Buy More BTC

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The Bank of France’s Deputy Governor Denis Beau speaking at the Paris Blockchain Summit discussed the progress being made with the central bank digital currency (CBDC) and touched upon possible regulatory changes and the legal framework. 

During the Paris Blockchain Week Summit 2020, on Thursday, Beau said there has been a “hands-on approach” with the bank’s experiment to launch a digital euro for the general public. 

Earlier this year, the Bank of France published a request for proposals for central bank digital currency “experiment” applications. The project’s aim was to help France’s central bank understand the risks and mechanisms of CBDCs and also contribute to the eurozone’s digital cash conversation. 

Related: Mass Adoption of a Digital Euro Could Be a ‘Clear Negative’ for Europe’s Banks: BofA

In May, the bank started working closely with Societe Generale to test out digital transactions, tokenization of securities as well as the settlement of a transaction on the private blockchain.

The bank is currently analyzing whether tokenization can help with cross-border payments, which he describes as being “costly, incur long delays before settlement, and give rise to uncertainties on AML-FT [anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism] checks, commented Beau.

In his remarks, Beau said, “Upcoming CBDC experiments – there will be eight of them – will help us to investigate not only the potential of technology but also to question the players in the ecosystem on what tomorrow’s landscape could look like, on subjects as fundamental as the methods of exchanging financial instruments for CBDCs, the improvement of the conditions for executing cross-border payments or new ways of making CBDCs available to financial sector players. In turn, these experiments will lead us to assess whether the regulatory framework currently in force needs to be adapted since we are carrying out these experiments within the current legal framework.”

In 2020, the European Central Bank (ECB) has been intensifying its work on the digital euro. Most recently, ECB President Christine Lagarde addressed the competition to dominate payments on a global scale and considerations for a euro-zone retail CBDC. 

Related: China’s Latest Digital Currency Trial Is Its Most Important Yet

Lagarde says she believes a digital euro would allow the bloc to be at the cutting edge of innovation but warned the lack of payments integration in Europe indicates that foreign providers have taken the lead. 

Both France and Germany have also been opposed to overseas companies, like Facebook, launching digital currencies that could compete with fiat money. Europe has pushed the idea of a possible launch of Libra (which has since been renamed Diem) being banned from European soil.

See also: French Central Bank Chief Eyes Public-Private Partnership for Possible Digital Euro

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A U.S. agency that fights financial crime is encouraging financial institutions, ranging from banks to cryptocurrency exchanges, to share customer information with one another to catch wrongdoers.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the Treasury Department, issued a fact sheet Thursday spelling out that the 2001 Patriot Act gives institutions wide latitude in what kind of information they are permitted to share. 

Overall, the sheet seemingly lowers the obstacles for further sharing of personal customer information among banks, the threshold of what qualifies as “suspicious” activity and whether the entities sharing customer information even need to be financial institutions. 

Related: SDX Chief Gets Philosophical About Crypto’s Swiss-Singapore Connection

Among other matters, the fact sheet clarifies that Section 314(b) of the act, and the regulations putting it into practice, “impose no limitations on the sharing of personally identifiable information.” The sheet added that institutions have to protect the security and confidentiality of this data, and use it only for the purposes laid out in the nearly 20-year-old law, passed a month after the 9/11 attacks.

Still, the guidance is likely to chafe privacy advocates inside and outside the crypto community who are already uneasy about the honeypot of personal data that FinCEN’s suspicious activity report (SAR) database has become. The more places information is shared, after all, the more ways it can be misused or stolen.

“It seems that in the spirit of ‘protecting our communities and preventing crimes and bad acts,’ FinCEN’s guidance is dramatically expanding its expectation of banks to share data, at the expense of individuals’ privacy, while potentially exposing them to very real cyber risks, when it is not clear that such a move is necessary,” said Nizan Geslevich Packin, an associate professor of law at City University of New York.

In a speech Thursday, FinCEN Director Kenneth Blanco framed interbank data sharing as a public safety measure. 

Related: India’s Banks Are Once More Serving Crypto Traders and Exchanges

“Information sharing among financial institutions through 314(b) is critical to identifying, reporting and preventing crime and bad acts,” he said in prepared remarks for a virtual gathering of bankers and lawyers. “It is an important part of how we protect our national security.”

However, he suggested institutions have been reluctant to take part. 

“Many have been calling for clarity in this area for a long time,” so the agency saw fit “to clarify in greater detail the circumstances where 314(b) applies, with the hope of enhancing participation,” Blanco said.

Lowering the bar

The information that can be shared is not limited to activities suspected of involving proceeds of a specified unlawful activity (SUA), Blanco said.

Institutions do not need “specific information that these activities directly relate to proceeds of an SUA, or to have identified specific proceeds of an SUA being laundered” in order to share data with each other, he said. Nor must they have made “a conclusive determination that the activity is suspicious.”

The FinCEN fact sheet claims additional reporting can shed “more light upon overall financial trails” and build “a more comprehensive and accurate picture of a customer’s activities that may involve money laundering or [where] terrorist financing is suspected.” 

Angela Angelovska-Wilson, co-founder of DLx Law and former chief legal and compliance officer at blockchain software firm Digital Asset, recognized that while multiple financial entities handling sensitive data could create additional vulnerabilities, it may ultimately be a positive. 

If banks can share data about what might be suspicious among each other, it could stop some entities from acting with blinders on, she argued. For example, if someone is engaging in one kind of activity in a certain account, and then behaving differently in another, that might seem suspicious to both banks. But if they communicate about this data before filing a SAR, it could benefit the customer as a more holistic picture of their financial activities could illuminate that they’re not doing anything suspicious. 

“Basically what 314(b) has done in the past is it has hampered people’s ability to share information in order to figure out whether or not something is actually suspicious and be able to thoughtfully report to FinCEN,” said Angelovska-Wilson.

Yet others read FinCEN’s continued efforts to widen the information-snagging net as a sign of policy failure.

“This shows that Congress has not been performing its oversight function,” said Michael German, a former FBI special agent, privacy expert and a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. “It’s waiting for the Treasury Department to claim that this is an effective measure against terrorism or money laundering. But after two decades of increased sharing of suspicious activity reports, it has not resulted in measurable successes against terrorism or money laundering. It’s time for our elected representatives to protect our data, the way that is promised under the Bank Secrecy Act, rather than these exceptions for sharing.”

FinCEN, he said, “is only going to keep pushing for more information and more information, even if that information is useless to its stated goals.”

Don’t tell a soul

Financial institutions are still forbidden to disclose that a SAR exists, and that applies even when the report was filed jointly with another company, FinCEN’s fact sheet stated.

“However, financial institutions participating in Section 314(b) that are considering filing or have filed a joint SAR may freely discuss the prospective or already filed joint SAR [among] themselves,” the fact sheet said.

While crypto exchanges aren’t explicitly listed, money services businesses and securities brokers are. Both categories include cryptocurrency businesses.

Compliance vendors and associations of financial institutions, including unincorporated ones governed by a contract between members, are also permitted to take part in information-sharing, FinCEN added.

“The big takeaway from this seems to be that FinCEN is encouraging people to engage in more data sharing,” said Michael Yaeger, a shareholder at the law firm of Carlton Fields, who focuses on government investigations and cybersecurity matters. “They are doing so in a variety of ways, including pointing out that a financial institution does not need to have made a conclusive determination that activity is suspicious or closely tied to a specified unlawful activity. An institution need not have concluded a SAR must be filed.” 

As CoinDesk reported Thursday, over the years there has been a move toward so-called defensive filing, meaning that if there is any question something could be deemed suspicious, banks are encouraged to file a SAR. 

This has led to what one compliance officer called an “avalanche of data” because financial institutions have been filing more and more to FinCEN. 

“Many questions about the safety of the information collected by FinCEN, as well as the bureau’s failure to provide clear guidelines regarding how and when it eventually deletes the data it has, remain unanswered,” Packin said. “This is concerning … in an era in which cybersecurity [has] become a major concern.”

Read more: How FinCEN Became a Honeypot for Sensitive Personal Data

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Bitcoin is struggling to make gains as an expected low-volume weekend could push price further down. Meanwhile, the increasing number of active Ethereum addresses this year is a testament to the network’s growth.

• Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $18,019 as of 21:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Slipping 2% over the previous 24 hours.
• Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $17,593-$18,404 (CoinDesk 20)
• BTC slightly above its 10-hour moving average but below the 50-hour on the hourly chart, a sideways signal for market technicians.

The price of bitcoin fell to as low as $17,593 Friday, according to CoinDesk 20 data. The price has recovered somewhat, hovering around $18,000 territory, and was at $17,962 as of press time. 

Read More: Bitcoin Whales Buy Low, Sell High; Retail Investors Chase Rallies: Data

Related: DeFi Game Aavegotchi Preps for Jan. 4 Mainnet Launch With NFT Auctions

“BTC looks like it lost momentum,” said Misha Alefirenko, co-founder of VelvetFormula, a digital asset liquidity provider. “If buyers are not stepping in soon, we may see a testing of the $16,400-$16,900 range over the weekend.” 

Friday is shaping up to be a better day in terms of volume at over $1 billion total for the eight major exchanges tracked by the CoinDesk 20 as of press time. Thursday’s figure was $965 million. However, weekends almost always have lower volume, such as last weekend’s $578 million daily average, according to CoinDesk 20 data.

“It’s a fairly balanced market at the moment, with the fresh inflows from institutional money met with profit taking from some existing large players as well as increased miners’ hedging,” noted Jean-Marc Bonnefous, partner at investment firm Tellurian Capital. 

Read More: MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin-Driven Offering Boosted to $650M 

Related: Why a Massive 169-Year-Old Insurance Company Just Bought $100M in Bitcoin

The derivatives market is also a factor, according to Bonnefous. “There is a big concentration around the $16,000 strike for the BTC options expiry on 25th December, which acts as a polarizing target short term,” he said. The $16,000 strike is the third-most popular strike point in the bitcoin options market, based on data from aggregator Skew.

“We are now seeing public companies like MicroStrategy using leverage to acquire a larger position in bitcoin,” said Michael Gord, chief executive officer of quant crypto firm Global Digital Assets.

December doldrums may continue, but many analysts are hyped up about bitcoin’s potential in 2021. “Next year, as annual budgets reopen, I expect a huge surge in demand to enter the industry from enterprises and institutional investors,” Global Digital Asset’s Gord said.  

“Macro matters and, in particular, risks surrounding Brexit may rattle equity markets and result in the U.S. dollar potentially strengthening,” said Denis Vinokourov, head of research for crypto brokerage Bequant. Equity markets are down globally Friday on some macroeconomic uncertainty.

• Asia’s Nikkei 225 closed in the red 0.40%, led lower by losses in SoftBank Group, which fell 4.7% in Japan on Friday.
• The FTSE 100 in Europe ended the day slipping 0.80% as Brexit negotiations closed in on a key deadline, leaving investors to sell on the uncertainty.
• The S&P 500 in the United States dipped 0.13% as investors remain unsure regarding the potential for government stimulus to help boost the economy.

“But given bitcoin and broader digital assets this year in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic and U.S. elections, expect bitcoin to show a similar amount of resilience,” added Vinokourov.

Ethereum active addresses uptrend in 2020

Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was down Friday, trading around $548 and slipping 3.1% in 24 hours as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET).

The number of active addresses on the Ethereum network has increased to 379,249 as of Dec. 10 from 158,039 on Jan. 1, a 140% increase.

Bequant’s Vinokourov told CoinDesk this data, in addition to metrics showing the movement of Ethereum users from centralized exchanges (CeFi) to decentralized exchanges (DeFi), is a huge liquidity opportunity for token economies within that ecosystem. 

Read More: This One Graph Shows Ether Going From CeFi to DeFi: Glassnode

“The amount of gas fees spent on ETH deposits to centralized exchanges has fallen to less than 1%, as of Dec. 9, from around 26% in late October 2017, according to Glassnode data,” Vinokourov noted. “There is plenty of liquidity in the market. As such, DeFi tokens look particularly attractive even with the recent downside.”

Other markets

Digital assets on the CoinDesk 20 are mostly red Friday. Notable winners as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):

• cosmos (ATOM) + 2.6%
• kyber network (KNC) + 1.1%

Notable losers:

• stellar (XLM) – 5.1%
• litecoin (LTC) – 4.4%
• chainlink (LINK) – 4.3%

Commodities:

• Oil was down 0.82%. Price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude: $46.57.
• Gold was in the green 0.14% and at $1,838 as of press time.

Treasurys:

• The 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield fell Friday dipping to 0.890 and in the red 1.3%.

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A retro, Tamagotchi-inspired game that came to life at the end of DeFi Summer is launching in full on Jan. 4.

Initially funded by an ecosystem grant from decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Aave, Aavegotchi aims to “make DeFi fun.”

In November, Aave officially announced its investment in Pixelcraft Studios, the Singapore-based company building Aavegotchi. And now the non-fungible token (NFT) game is hosting a series of raffles to reward early adopters ahead of its mainnet launch next month.

Related: Market Wrap: Bitcoin Holding at $18K; Active Ethereum Addresses up 140% in 2020

But what do these pixelated little ghosts do?

In short, each Aavegotchi is a playable avatar that represents DeFi collateral that is earning yield on Aave. That said, you can also battle the spooky little critters, level them up and equip them with wearables that change traits. As for the ghost theme, that’s because “aave” means ghost in Finnish.

Since an Aavegotchi represents locked assets, its owner can liquidate the underlying stake at any time. But in doing so the Aavegotchi will disappear. So it’s a test to see what happens to playability when characters have real value beyond their gaming value.

Do you keep the NFT? Or would you rather have the crypto assets it represents?

Summoning Aavegotchi with aTokens

Related: This One Graph Shows Ether Going From CeFi to DeFi: Glassnode

Users can summon an Aavegotchi by staking specific aTokens into their desired gotchi. aTokens (for example, aUSDC, aLINK, etc.) are interest-bearing tokens pegged 1:1 to the value of the underlying crypto asset that is deposited in the Aave protocol.

“We wanted to build a game around aTokens because of how intuitive their benefits are,” explained Coder Dan, Aavegotchi’s pseudonymous co-founder and CEO. “For instance, if you hold 1,000 aUSDC in your wallet now, you will likely find a higher balance in your wallet next time you look. That’s because the interest accrues natively in your wallet, in real time.”

Read more: The Inevitable Marriage of Yield Farming and NFTs

There are two ways to acquire aTokens. Users can visit Aave and deposit tokens as collateral into the Aave protocol or they can swap other Ethereum-based assets for aTokens on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap. 

Non-whales welcome

The team behind Aavegotchi is building the game with Aave’s DeFi platform at its heart but it’s also incorporating the latest Chainlink oracles to create a fully on-chain experience – especially with provably random distributions.

On Tuesday, Aavegotchi rolled out its second of three NFT raffles using Chainlink’s random number generator to “level the playing field” for smaller investors. (In other gamified DeFi experiments, large holders tend to win.)

“We love whales, we want whales,” Aavegotchi founder Jesse Johnson told CoinDesk in a call, referring to those holding large numbers of tokens. “But at the same time, it’s nice for normal, retail-type people to play the game by holding GHST tokens in smaller amounts. And also have the chance to win high-end items.”

This raffle, which ended today, featured superhero-themed wearables for mainnet Aavegotchi to become “Aavevengers.” 

“Everything we’ve done at this point is not the actual game, but all things leading up to it,” Johnson explained. “You’re not winning wearables, but vouchers to claim wearables once the game launches.”

Just like tickets, the Vouchers can be traded on OpenSea or other NFT marketplaces. Johnson said these raffles are really just a stress test and community-building exercise.

Mainnet launching on Aave V2

The Aavegotchis were set to arrive around the end of 2020 via the first “Haunt” but that date was pushed back so the game could be “Aave V2–made from day one,” Johnson said.

Version 2 of the protocol launched last week.

Read more: Aave Launches V2 in Bid to Make Borrowing Against Volatile Assets Less Risky

This “haunt” has 10,000 Portal NFTs available, with each one being able to summon one Aavegotchi. Portals can be purchased with the GHST governance token.

Once a portal opens, 10 gotchis will be randomly generated, each with its own trait scores (brain size, spookiness, aggression, energy, etc.) and required collateral type. From the 10, only one Aavegotchi can be summoned and the other nine will fade away, forever lost to the ether.

In fact, the portal itself is an NFT, so users also have the option of reselling the Portal (with all 10 potential choices available) on an NFT marketplace like OpenSea.

“We expect them to sell very quickly, if it’s anything like when our GHST token launched where 6 million dai flowed in in about three minutes,” Johnson said. “So we expect people to buy these 10,000 portals in batches of, say, 50.” 

A fully realized crypto pet

Further down the road, an open-world metaverse called The Realm will launch where Aavegotchis will populate as first-gen crypto pets. 

“It’s important to us that owners be incentivized to interact with their Aavegotchis,” said Johnson. “Too many first-gen crypto pets quickly become neglected and are collecting dust in wallets, and that doesn’t really live up this idea of a fully realized crypto pet.”

Within this world, Aavegotchi’s will be able explore on digital land, gather in the town square for votes and access an array of minigames. Comparable metaverses would include the Sandbox or Decentraland.

“Imagine your gotchis running around in a top-down, 2D classic Zelda game,” said Johnson.

Such is the way of making DeFi fun.

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Over the last few years, blockchain has emerged as a national priority in both the public and private sectors in China where they have even received increasing support from both local and provincial governmental bodies.

Digital asset custodian Aegis Custody has received the South Dakota Division of Banking’s blessing to start forming a trust company in the state.

The full-service digital asset shop must clear a series of minor regulatory hurdles before it can secure the trust charter necessary to do business, President Michael McCarty said. He said the process would likely wrap up in weeks.

Once it does, Aegis will become the latest digital asset custodian with a foothold in Sioux Falls. BitGo and Anchorage both base their operations in the trust company-friendly city. But while those industry stalwarts cater mostly to the cryptocurrency custody market, Aegis, already partnered with a Hong Kong custodian, is looking to broader opportunities in digitized finance.

Related: Crypto Custodian Copper Aims to Bridge Gap Between DeFi and Traditional Finance With New Tool

McCarty offered international supply chain financing as one target industry. Aegis would custody the contracts involving factories, companies, suppliers and banks, “digitize those and put them out for investment,” he said. Stored in Aegis’ offline custody wallet, these digital assets could raise working capital for the owners with outstanding invoices.

For example: financing the supply chain of Amazon-sold goods. Raw materials from China have a long way to go before cashing out as a finished product, even if their suppliers need capital fast. Traditional financing allows them to meet their financial obligations. With blockchain, McCarty hopes to make that process more transparent and secure.

“We’re really a full-stack custodian and digitization platform,” he said. “Because we have relationships with several financial institutions here in the United States as well as in Taiwan and in Hong Kong, we can serve as a global market.”

Trust company status would allow Aegis to custody U.S. investors “traditional assets” at home while giving them opportunities in digitized trade finance abroad, he said.

Related: Coinbase Has Raked in $14B in New Institutional Assets Since April

McCarty told CoinDesk Aegis already has a “backlog” of clients waiting for the trust company to launch its U.S. business. He declined to reveal their identities ahead of the full charter approval.

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It is hard to imagine that it has only been over a decade since Bitcoin’s genesis block was first mined.

On Dec. 8, Dutch cryptocurrency exchange LiteBit sent an email to its users stating it would be delisting the privacy coin firo (formerly zcoin). 

According to the email, the decision was made “partly due to the privacy aspect of this crypto. The regulator of crypto companies in the Netherlands has indicated that cryptocurrencies aimed at privacy are too high a risk.”

LiteBit confirmed zcoin will be delisted on Dec. 22. 

Related: India’s Banks Are Once More Serving Crypto Traders and Exchanges

This news comes a few months after Shapeshift delisted monero, zcash and dash. South Korea-based exchange Bithumb also dropped monero in June, continuing a trend of delisting privacy coins by cryptocurrency exchanges that seems unlikely to stop anytime soon. 

“At the moment, the impact is primarily limited to smaller or regional exchanges” said Firo project steward Reuben Yap. “However, it signals to the rest of the space that delisting is the only way to remain compliant with AML/KYC [know your customer/anti-money laundering], which isn’t the case at all, setting a bad precedent.”

Delisting around the world

Yap said delistings have become a worldwide trend, especially in Asian countries such as South Korea and Japan. Europe, where privacy regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) would seem more open to privacy-focused coins, has seen France’s finance committee recommending bans on privacy coins. Recently, new Dutch AML regulations have created perceived barriers for privacy coins, focusing on knowing who are all parties in a cryptocurrency transaction. Monero has already been delisted in the Netherlands. 

In Australia, cryptocurrency exchanges are delisting privacy coins amid regulatory and banking pressure. The blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis is believed to have played a large part in the decisions made by Australia and others. 

Related: How FinCEN Became a Honeypot for Sensitive Personal Data

The U.S. Secret Service has urged Congress to create ways to limit the use of privacy-focused cryptocurrencies.

“Delisting is one of the easiest responses for small, compliant cryptocurrency exchanges,” said Justin Ehrenhofer, a Monero contributor. “They may not have the resources to properly communicate their risk mitigation strategies to regulators and banks.”

In most cases, banks, exchanges and other entities find it simpler to completely write off products related to specific coins rather than expend resources creating detailed compliance programs, according to Ehrenhofer. 

Why cryptocurrency exchanges delist privacy coins

The core reasons behind these delistings are the privacy features that are important to many cryptocurrency users. Bitcoin’s cypherpunk origins were in part about escaping the ties of the financial system and the surveillance and scrutiny it enables. 

But regulators have seen those features as conflicting with AML and KYC regulations. 

“Many countries’ official reasoning is that these bans and delistings would help combat money laundering and illicit use of cryptocurrencies. However, this seems more like a facade,” said Yap. 

Japan’s delisting of privacy coins was triggered by the Coincheck hack of nem, which does not have any privacy features, according to Yap. The hack was a result of weak exchange security, not privacy coins, and privacy coins weren’t used to launder the proceeds. 

“As in many cases, it seems that privacy coins were once again the scapegoat,” said Yap. 

Read more: ShapeShift Delists Privacy Coin Zcash Over Regulatory Concerns

Australian exchanges like Swyftx apparently didn’t agree with the ban, but the reasoning behind it hasn’t been widely disseminated. 

Korean exchanges cited Financial Action Task Force regulations as the reason to delist privacy coins despite privacy coins posing no issues with the FATF. 

Bolstering Yap’s arguments is the fact that U.S. law firm Perkins Coie released a report on how privacy coins can be compliant with existing AML regulations. 

“Is it possible for regulated entities to comply with anti-money laundering (AML) obligations when supporting privacy coins? The answer, in our view, is yes,” wrote the authors. 

Ehrenhofer said the most common given reason for delistings is de-risking from perceived (or direct) pressure from regulators and banks. 

“Most jurisdictions do not impose strict bans on these privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies, but they may require more detailed AML programs before feeling comfortable with them,” he said. 

The impact on privacy coins

The delistings raise issues for privacy coins and signal to other actors in the ecosystem that it’s okay to delist them, even if there are no compliance issues. This has far-reaching effects. 

Exchanges and other actors have delisted and could continue to do so under soft pressure not just from authorities but also their banking partners, even if they’re not breaking any laws. 

Yap points to zcash’s delisting from Coinbase UK due to concerns from its banking partner, ClearBank, as one example of this, setting a problematic precedent if other banks follow suit.

Additionally, said Ehrenhofer, delisting of small assets deeply impacts the viability of those assets, lowering their liquidity to a critical level. On the other hand, for established privacy coins like monero it just pushes users “to exchange in riskier, less-compliant jurisdictions.”

As a result, “the information that would normally be within the view of regulators and compliant exchanges is now distributed among less-regulated exchanges in other jurisdictions, harming investigations,” he said. 

And then there’s the inclusion of dash among those delisted coins. Originally conceived as “Darkcoin,” a fork of Bitcoin, Dash abandoned its focus on privacy years ago to concentrate on other use cases for its dash cryptocurrency. 

In a statement shared with CoinDesk, Glenn Austin, Dash Core Group CFO, speculated that dash’s delisting may have been the result of a misperception, based on old assumptions derived from its Darkcoin roots. “Multiple leading industry experts conclude that dash is no more a privacy coin than bitcoin,” he said.

Indeed, as the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains develop more privacy features, exchanges will have to grapple with the necessary compliance processes they may have sought to avoid by delisting privacy coins. 

Read more: Bitcoin’s Future: Exactly How a Coming Upgrade Could Improve Privacy and Scaling

But in the interim, said Yap, we may continue to see some coins remove their privacy features as they seek the basic goal of survival. 

Looking ahead

“For some projects, the best approach may be to produce quality opinions and presentations that demonstrate how privacy coins can be supported while addressing AML/KYC concerns instead of fighting regulations,” said Yap. 

He said another approach should be fighting the narrative of blockchain analytics firms, which promote the idea that on-chain analysis is the only way to grapple with AML/KYC concerns. 

For Ehrenhofer, privacy-preserving cryptocurrency communities should work with compliance professionals to ensure they feel comfortable with the compliance programs they present to banks and regulators. 

If a cryptocurrency exchange’s survival doesn’t depend on it, it’s unlikely it will put in the compliance effort needed to support any coin that comes close to being in conflict with AML and KY considerations. 

He points to ComplyFirst as a company that has created resources to assist exchanges in explaining how they can support assets that may result in more complex compliance cases. 

“Privacy coins will continue to face opposition and challenges along the way, which will heat up as cryptocurrencies start becoming more mainstream,” said Yap. “However, just as VPNs, Tor, HTTPS, and end-to-end encrypted messaging are now considered standard protection tools, privacy technology in cryptocurrencies will be considered commonplace, too.”

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The claim that this is something to be proud of because it somehow protects minorities and low-income people from being bullied is nothing short of bullshit.

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Data from blockchain analysis firm Glassnode indicates that decentralized finance (DeFi) may be taking a huge bite out of centralized finance (CeFi) when it comes to ether.

• The amount of fees on Ethereum spent on ether deposits to centralized exchanges has fallen to less than 1%, as of Dec. 9, 2020, from around 26% in late October 2017, according to Glassnode data.
• For most of 2020, almost all fees spent on transactions involving centralized exchanges (CEXs) were used for ether withdrawals.
• The dominance of fees on Ethereum spent on transactions on CEXs in total also has dropped sharply in 2020.

Or as Glassnode tweeted earlier today on the data put it:

• DeFi has been grabbing the headlines since the summer as many investors and traders have been turning to these semi-autonomous exchanges and lenders, mostly built on the Ethereum blockchain.
• At the time of writing, there is approximately $14.18 billion in total value locked in DeFi, according to popular data analytics site DeFi Pulse, a significant jump from around $662 million in the beginning of the year.
• Maker, WBTC, Compound and Aave are currently the top DeFi protocols by total collateral locked; all are based on the Ethereum blockchain.
• CEXs, including some of the biggest players in the space, have also been rolling out news business initiatives with DeFi features.
• In an interview with CoinDesk previously, Chief Executive Changpeng Zhao of the biggest crypto exchange by daily spot trading volumes, Binance, said he fully expects DeFi to one day cannibalize his CEX business.

Related: Multicoin Capital Leads $1.15M Seed Round for DeFi Protocol Swivel Finance

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MicroStrategy announced Friday it raised $650 million, up from a recently boosted $550 million, in a convertible senior note sale designed to allow the business intelligence company to buy more bitcoin.

The company estimates $634.9 million of that sum – the net proceeds – will be available for bitcoin allocations in accordance with its treasury reserve policy.

The amount of the offering was boosted to $650 million from the $550 million announced on Wednesday after the purchaser of the notes exercised in full an option to buy up to an added $100 million of the convertible senior notes.

This story will be updated.

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There are more bitcoin “whales” than ever, and new data shows how they drive market movements. MassMutual is the latest legacy institution to buy into bitcoin. And the number of Ethereum developers is growing at a breathless pace.

Top shelf

Whales and krill
New data from OKEx and Kaiko suggests that bitcoin “whales” – the mega-wealthy crypto investors and, potentially, institutions – were selling at market highs as retail investors bought in. Trading data of the bitcoin/tether pair on OKEx’s platform between August and November showed that during the November bitcoin rally whales took profits and bought the dip, while smaller buyers continued purchasing as they did in September and October, despite higher prices in the oldest cryptocurrency, and panic sold around the Thanksgiving pullback. While the picture is likely more complicated, OKEx’s data shows how small buyers are faced with “swimming with the tide or against it,” by holding positions largely influenced by major buyers and sellers.

Mass buy
Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance, a $235 billion insurance giant, purchased $100 million worth of bitcoin and invested $5 million in the crypto asset manager NYDIG. MassMutual told the Wall Street Journal it was a seeking “measured yet meaningful” stake in an increasingly digital world by taking on direct exposure to bitcoin. The life insurance company is the latest institutional stalwart to join bitcoin’s march into the financial mainstream, joining other publicly traded corporations and multi-billion dollar money managers in embracing bitcoin’s “macro” play. 

Related: Money Reimagined: Bitcoin’s Tug of War as Wall Street Moves In

Developer doozy
More than 300 new developers per month are coming into crypto to work on Ethereum, according to data compiled by venture firm Electric Capital. In its annual developer report, the VC found the number of coders entering the crypto space to develop blockchains and projects is increasing nearly across the board – though Ethereum is by far seeing the most action. Almost 2,300 average monthly developers worked on Ethereum across the third quarter of 2020, with Bitcoin in second at a bit under 400 (up 70% from three years ago).

Gone public
An Ethereum-based investment fund, from the Canadian money manager 3iQ, has gone public on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). Some $76.5 million was raised in an initial public offering, which sold off two types of shares that offer exposure to ether, Ethereum’s native currency. In going public, the firm’s ether product marks a “world first,” according to a tweet by the fund manager on Thursday. 3iQ successfully launched a similar bitcoin fund earlier this year.

Corporate backers
Three major Chinese companies are taking part in the latest test of the nation’s central bank’s digital currency (CBDC) initiative. According to a local news source, winners in an ongoing currency lottery/pilot program in the city of Suzhou can now spend the “digital yuan” on Meituan’s bike-sharing platform, Didi’s taxi service and Bilibili’s video-sharing site. The latest giveaway on Dec. 12 reportedly sees 10,000 residents of the city apply for 200 digital yuan prizes. They can spend the CBDC at physical stores equipped with the appropriate point-of-sale technology, and now online via major Chinese companies. An earlier test occured in Shenzhen.

Quick bites

• BACK AGAIN: Banks in India are once again servicing cryptocurrency exchanges and traders. (CoinDesk)
• PUTIN EYES: Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed an order obliging public officials to report any cryptocurrency holdings. (CoinDesk)
• NYAG ORDER: New York Attorney General says Bitfinex, Tether could complete loan document handover in “weeks.” (CoinDesk)
• COOL $276K: Rapper Lil Yachty sells out his social token, $YACHTY, in 21 minutes and 41 seconds. (CoinDesk)
• ETHICAL STANDARDS: The World Economic Forum (WEF) is designing a global governance framework for the ethical data collection and sharing. (CoinDesk)
• STIGMA GONE? Wealthy are buying in. (Bloomberg)
• OFF EXCHANGES: Bitcoin continues to depart crypto exchanges. (Decrypt)

Market intel

Whale pack
The number of wallets holding at least 1,000 bitcoins now stands at a record high of 2,052, up 30% on the year, according to Chainalysis data. The so-called rich list, the number of individual addresses holding at least 1,000 coins, is also up over 7% to 2,270. The metric reached a record high of 2,274 on Nov. 24, according to data source Glassnode. “That’s a big increase in the wealthiest wallets and provides evidence that institutional investors have entered the market,” Chainlysis noted in its weekly market intel newsletter dated Dec. 10. That said, smaller holders have also increased: This year, wallets holding at least five BTC have increased by 8,842 (4%) to 234,408.

At stake

Related: First Mover: Stimulus Bet Wins Even as Bitcoin Slips Below $18K

First, rights.
Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith stands accused of… what exactly?

Last year, Griffith, a 37-year-old American computer science doctorate, was arrested and detained for violating U.S. sanctions against North Korea, after he travelled to the nation to present on the decentralized, public blockchain Ethereum.

The Ethereum Foundation staffer and research scientist presented on how to utilize this open cryptocurrency network for local and international transfers, at the Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference. This information – essentially that ether is uncensorable – is decidedly in the public domain. He did not receive an honorarium for his presentation.

Now, Griffith’s attorneys are left wondering what the boy genius is accused of. In a new court filing the defense is requesting “particulars” about what services Griffith allegedly provided, who else was involved and how these services violated U.S. law. (He traveled to the nation even after his request for permission to do so from the State Department had been denied.)

“The defense should not be forced to use a decoder ring on over 6,800 pages of discovery – much of which has been heavily redacted by the government – to discern the basic information that should be present in every indictment: what crimes were actually alleged to have been committed, by whom, and where,” they write.

So what’s at stake? Only the civil liberties guaranteed and protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The count against Griffith is conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as well as some associated legal violations. Though prosecutors were shy of specifics. (The IEEPA provides broad executive powers to place economic sanctions on individuals, businesses, governments and other entities – thereby prohibiting U.S. persons and corporations from dealing with sanctioned nations.)

Notably, under the 1988 Berman Amendment, the IEEPA prohibits sanctioning the transfer of information or “informational materials.” That includes the type of speech freely available online. The question now is whether Griffith provided a service to the North Korean government, a point his defense has rebuked.

Even if it’s granted that Griffith traveled to a sanctioned nation – a big taboo – and broke defense mandates limiting the type of “services” or information one can provide to an adversarial nation – it’s likely the information Griffith presented on would not be sanctionable.

Griffith’s presentation was titled “Blockchain and Peace,” and according to the complaint it addressed “how a blockchain technology, including a ‘smart contract,’ could be used to benefit” North Korea. 

As the FBI itself has said, it contained “basic concepts accessible on the internet.”

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Rostislav Solod, 19, is the youngest lawmaker in the city of Kramatorsk, Ukraine. He’s also a crypto millionaire.

Solod is the son of two national parliament members, Yuri Solod and Natalia Korolevska. He entered politics this autumn, fresh out of school. In his obligatory property declaration, he said he owned 185,000 monero, or $24.5 million worth of the cryptocurrency.  

This was, in fact, the only piece of property the young lawmaker owned himself. Everything else in his declaration, including real estate, cars and trademarks, belongs to his parents. 

Related: Ukrainian Politician Discloses Owning $24M in Privacy Coin Monero

Solod told CoinDesk during a recent interview that he started watching crypto when he was at school, around 2014. Bitcoin did not attract him. Monero (XMR), on the other hand, seemed like a more viable cryptocurrency due to its anonymity and constant demand by the dark market, Solod said. 

He accumulated monero through 2015 on exchanges, he said, using his savings and some money his parents gave him for a business project that never happened. Solod “never really liked school,” he said, so he spent a lot of time studying financial markets and learning about crypto. 

Ukraine, which was rated by Chainalysis as the country with the highest crypto adoption level in the world, is now in the process of passing its first legislation regulating crypto. Solod admits that, at first, he was not crazy about this. 

“For me, as an entrepreneur and a young guy, this is bad: I used to see crypto as an island in the ocean, untouched by a sinful hand. An absolutely free zone where everyone can do anything. But as a politician, I understand that this law will bring money into the [country’s] budget,” Solod said.

Related: Ukraine’s Draft Crypto Bill Passes First Parliamentary Hearing

Monero’s privacy feature no longer applies to Solod. He must report all his property as a public official, thanks to a law intended to prevent corruption and illegal enrichment in the country’s echelons of power. Going forward, the young politician might liquidate the crypto and reinvest the money into a new business project, he said.

Solod is thinking about getting into crypto mining (no decision on what coin so far) and buying some tokens from the freshly launched Efforce project supported by Apple co-founder Steve Wozlniak. But his favorite crypto-related plan is launching his own token, Solod said. 

“Elections and the political career distracted me from these plans for a while,” he said. 

They distract him from his studies as well. Solod said he’s currently pursuing an economy major at the Royal Holloway University in London. He’s studying remotely due to the coronavirus quarantine, he said, although it’s sometimes hard to find time for both work and school. 

Asked why he decided to go into politics, Solod referred to his family, saying that “he was born in it.” 

“I was interested to figure out why the country isn’t developing,” Solod said. “I really want to change the situation with the corruption. The old methods to prevent it aren’t working anymore.”

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