Ahead of the long-anticipated public listing for his company, Coinbase’s CEO Brian Armstrong asserted that US regulators are wrong in believing cryptocurrencies are primarily used for illicit transactions. He added that the industry wants to be treated on the same playing field as traditional finance when it comes down to legislative frameworks.

Armstrong on Crypto Misconceptions

The belief that digital assets are mainly used for illegal transactions has been going on for years, perhaps since bitcoin’s usage in some dark web marketplaces starting almost a decade ago. Regulators have used it as a good bashing point, and US-based watchdogs have been at the forefront of those attacks.

US Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, has repeatedly outlined the alleged massive usage of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for terrorist financing, Ponzi schemes, buying illegal goods, and everything in between. Naturally, the Treasury’s FinCEN department proposed quite restrictive legislation, which, however, has been indefinitely postponed.

Brian Armstrong, the CEO of the largest US-based crypto exchange preparing for its direct listing today, touched upon these concerns during a CNBC interview. However, he asserted that cash and even the highly-regulated banking sector are more frequently utilized in illegal transactions than crypto.

He referred to a report published today by the recently launched Crypto Council for Innovation indicating that “less than 1%” of all digital asset transactions have illicit roots. Simultaneously, PwC estimations showed that the percentage is more than 4x higher with the traditional economy, and more specifically cash.

“The data we have just indicates that crypto is really not uniquely crime written. In fact, the data suggests it’s better than cash in that regard.”

Treat us Equally

Armstrong further outlined the significance of adequate regulation for his company, especially now that it will become public, but also for the entire industry. He suggested that the US should treat the crypto space as other financial sectors.

“We want to be treated on the level playing field with traditional financial services at the very least and not have any kind of punishment for being in the crypto space.”

He also joined Kraken’s CEO, Jesse Powell, saying that the world’s largest country by nominal GDP risks falling further behind other nations, such as China, in terms of crypto and blockchain adoption.

“China has really embraced cryptocurrency and blockchain in a big way – starting from about six years ago. They are substantially far ahead.” – Armstrong added.

[Press Release – St, John’s Antigua, Barbuda, 14th April, 2021]

MakiSwap, the number one decentralized exchange on Huobi Eco Chain (Heco), has raised $1.4 million in seed and private funding to build the most robust and feature-rich automated market maker exchange and yield farming platform on Huobi Eco Chain.

The oversubscribed round was led by Inclusion Capital, which incubated and supported MakiSwap in its development efforts. Other participants include Kenetic Capital, LD Capital, NGC Ventures, Polygon Network, DAO Maker, Momentum 6, AU21 Capital, Xend Finance and others. Jawad Ashraf, Founder of Terra Virtua, also joined the round as an individual investor.

MakiSwap is the leading AMM on Huobi Eco Chain, a high-performance blockchain supporting the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Heco was launched by the Huobi Global exchange and was met with formidable community support in China and the Asia-Pacific region. Heco projects are now shifting their focus to the global market, looking to bring in DeFi users from other regions and other blockchains.

MakiSwap was developed by Unilayer, a cross-chain DEX aggregator and DeFi ecosystem. The exchange offers unique features for an AMM designed with the professional trader in mind, including limit orders, advanced charting tools, analytics, and more. MakiSwap also features lucrative yield farming opportunities designed to incentivize users to make the jump into the new protocol and blockchain.

“We’re extremely excited to launch MakiSwap on Huobi Eco Chain and to the public, we do see a big potential for HECO to capture a lot of market share compared to other blockchains in the near future,” said Geo, Founder of Unilayer and MakiSwap.

“Makiswap is leading a new wave of Defi by empowering Huobi’s ECO chain community with key tools and infrastructure. We are excited to support Makiswap in helping to transform global finance through Defi.” Jehan Chu, Founder and Managing Partner, Kenetic

MakiSwap is powered by the MAKI governance token, which will be airdropped to holders of Unilayer’s LAYER token on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain.

About MakiSwap

MakiSwap is the leading AMM exchange on Huobi Eco Chain, developed and launched by Unilayer, a cross-chain liquidity aggregator and unified interface for decentralized exchanges. MakiSwap’s governance token is MAKI, distributed fairly to all holders of Unilayer’s LAYER token. MakiSwap includes an advanced set of features like limit orders and advance charting to offer the best experience for professional DeFi traders.

Paying homage to Satoshi Nakamoto and his message embedded in the Bitcoin Genesis Block in 2009, Coinbase has done the same today. On the day they’re set to become a publicly traded company, the exchange asked a large Bitcoin mining pool to embed a note in the Bitcoin blockchain in regards to the latest stimulus bill. 

• When launching the Genesis Block of the first-ever cryptocurrency in January 2009, the anonymous creator(s) embedded the following message referring to the financial crisis at the time: 

• “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” 

• More than twelve years later, Coinbase has followed the example set by Bitcoin’s creator. The exchange announced they had asked the mining pool F2pool to code the following text: 

• “TNYTimes 10/Mar/2021 House Gives Final Approval to Biden’s $1.9T Pandemic Relief Bill.” 

• The commonalities between the two messages spread more than being embedded on the Bitcoin blockchain. Both have referred to the economic struggles in 2009 and 2021 led by the aforementioned banking crisis and the COVID-19-induced crisis.  
• More specifically, both messages have touched upon the governments’ somewhat controversial measures in trying to fight the consequences of the fallouts. Coinbase’s note cites this article published by the New York Times, which outlined the latest stimulus package aimed to alleviate some of the financial pain from the pandemic.  
• The largest US-based crypto exchange has chosen today to pay homage to Nakamoto because of the significance of this day. As previously reported, Coinbase is set to become a publicly traded company on August 14th, 2021, through a direct listing.