An overview of current news in the crypto space

In our digest, we took a look at some important crypto industry news over the past week:

1. The State Duma will consider several bills to regulate cryptocurrencies in November
2. Leading Swiss bank launches BTC and ETH trading and storage services
3. It turned out whose bitcoin price forecasts are more accurate – AI or crypto traders
4. Journalist failed to win 10,000 bitcoins in Max Kaiser’s quiz
5. Buterin was accused of implementing a fraudulent scheme “a thousand times” superior to FTX

Now for more details. Reading time: 6 minutes.

1. According to Aksakov’s statement, the approval process regarding the review of the package of documents was complicated due to the complexity of negotiations. Financial market participants and regulators faced the difficulty of finding a common understanding. For example, Aksakov mentioned that the Central Bank of the Russian Federation expressed extreme caution regarding cryptocurrencies and did not very much approve of the legalization of digital assets in the country. There was also some resistance from other actors, including those in the energy sector.
   “The bills are under harmonization. Unfortunately, the subject of harmonization has been delayed. I expect that in November, including thanks to Rosfinmonitoring, and given the ever-growing scale of business that requires regulation, we will start considering these bills. I hope that in a short period of time we will consider this topic, regulate it, and we will receive money to the budget, while businesses will be able to carry out their respective activities normally using this tool. In November, I myself will personally initiate discussions on this topic on the Committee’s platform to spur the process,” said Anatoly Aksakov.

   In recent statements, the first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technology and Communications, Anton Tkachev, expressed the opinion that it is possible that Russia will introduce restrictions on mining for individuals.

2. Switzerland’s leading bank St.Galler Kantonalbank (SGKB) has launched digital asset-related trading and custodial services. The service, developed in collaboration with cryptobank SEBA, allows selected SGKB customers to transact in bitcoin and Ethereum.

   The service successfully passed the testing phase in early 2023, and other cryptocurrencies will be added in the future based on customer demand.

   Founded in 1868, SGKB is the country’s fifth largest bank and manages $58.9 billion in assets, offering services to retail and institutional clients. SEBA Global Bank is also licensed by the local regulator.

   In 2021, SEBA launched Switzerland’s first crypto fund, an income program for institutional clients, and gold tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. In 2022, the bank raised $120 million, was licensed by the Abu Dhabi regulator, and launched ETH stacking for institutions and an NFT storage service.

3. Using artificial intelligence (AI) to predict prices is becoming increasingly popular in the cryptocurrency industry. With this in mind, the GNY Range Report team decided to see if its model could make more accurate predictions than crypto traders.

   GNY Range Report uses technical analysis indicators to predict the price range of cryptocurrencies using the LSTM machine learning model. To answer the important question, a bitcoin (BTC) price prediction contest was launched in which crypto traders made different guesses every day from October 23 to October 25.A total of 206 predictions were made, of which 56 had higher accuracy than the 3% obtained by artificial intelligence.

   By October 25, the bitcoin price had risen to $33,892.02, while the average crypto trader’s prediction on October 23 was made at $31,168, beating the GNY Range Report’s prediction of $29,861 by a huge margin.

   Note that the average crypto traders’ forecast for the mentioned days was $32,795.33, while Artificial Intelligence registered an average of $32298.33 for the same period. The former was closer to the final result of $33,892.02, trailing by $1,103.31.

4. More than a decade ago, journalist and Infowars host Alex Jones lost access to 10,000 bitcoins, the passwords to which he had stored on his laptop.

   International journalist and bitcoin advocate Max Kaiser decided to give him a chance to get his 10,000 BTC back by asking him to answer five questions.

   Jones ended up taking a quiz consisting of basic questions about bitcoin, but none of his answers were correct. Here’s how they were worded:

   How many total bitcoins will be issued?
   How often does the difficulty level change?
   What is the name of the underlying hashing algorithm?
   How often do new blocks appear on average?
   Is Craig Wright the Satoshi Nakamoto of the world?

   Kaiser expressed disappointment with Jones’ answers, saying he turned down the $800 million, and Jones jokingly said it was probably for the best.

   “…Honestly, I’m glad I didn’t get 10,000 bitcoins, otherwise I’d probably be dead by now,” Jones explained.

   Jones’ bitcoins were once purchased at a rate below $5, but today his fortune would be valued at over $350 million.

   During the quiz, Kaiser repeatedly demonstrated his amazement at Jones’ non-seriousness and lack of knowledge, provided he knew about the test that could have earned him 10,000 bitcoins.

5. Vitalik Buterin and Joseph Lubin, co-founders of the Ethereum blockchain, have been accused of participating in a fraudulent scheme that allegedly involved collaboration with corrupt U.S. officials. These accusations were made by an attorney and former Ethereum advisor named Steven Nerayoff. According to Nerayoff, the extent of the network developers’ fraudulent activities far exceeds that of Sam Bankman-Fried and his bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX by several thousand times.

   The attorney claims that fraud in the Ethereum project is obvious, and he attributes the success of the scheme to the cooperation of the project’s founders with high-ranking federal agency officials, including former and current U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairmen Jay Clayton and Gary Gensler. It should be noted, however, that Nerayoff has not provided specific evidence to support his allegations.

   Thank you for being with us. Crypto industry news on Bit.team – always up to date.