Digital Currency

By Othman Darwish Since the invention of Bitcoin cryptocurrency and its underlying blockchain technology, a new era of asset digitization emerge. By asset we mean anything could be owned, has a value, and could be transferred from one party to another. Asset digitization aims to provide proof of the ownership, bookkeeping of value, and streamline electronic exchanges.  Electronic transfer of asset done traditionally by the help of centralized and trusted bookkeeper/asset registrar, here the central authority acts as notary service to guarantee the validity and finality of the ownership transfer. As a result, a central entity would maintain a ledger ( bookkeeper ) of assets transfer transactions,  and keep maintaining its valid and final state. With the emergence of blockchain technology, this game changed forever; the needs for a central party that acts as a trusted intermediary to execute ownership transfer of an asset is eliminated, and replaced by blockchain secur...

By Othman Darwish Since its invention, Bitcoin challenged regulators all over the world, different regulatory options and actions taken by jurisdictions, such as public awareness/warnings, research papers and case studies, regulations for specific digital currency stockholder (e.g. exchanges regulations ), others regulatory trying to adapt existing regulations and interpret it in way that fit digital currencies nature and properties , some regulatory  went extremely and  found  Bitcoin a real threat to their nation currency and capital control , thus prohibit or ban it . Bitcoin facing different regulatory concerns on different levels, capital and currency control is main concerns for some countries (e.g. Chain and Russia), other jurisdictions pay more attention on other aspects, such as consumer protection, taxes evasion, and AML/CTF activates (e.g. USA, UK, Australia). Although existing regulations already in place to protect investors/consumers, prevent f...