Launching Venus, Which is Called An ‘Independent, Regional Version’ Of Facebook’s Libra

What Is Binance Targeting With Venus?

In the first of its case, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance had announced that it is launching an open blockchain project which is called Venus to develop the regional stablecoins that are pegged to the fiat currencies as they are traditional currencies that are usually issued and backed by the government.

Coming to the forefront is Malta-based Binance where the goal of Venus is to empower developed and developing countries thereby spur new currencies while it did not mention Libra, the cryptocurrency project of Libra. However, Binance went into more detail in the Chinese language version of the announcement stating that here Venus is intended to be the independent and autonomous regional version of Libra. 

To create a global digital currency Libra’s goal allows people to avoid the fees associated with the credit cards along with remittance services while it was here that Binance says Venus has the objective to enable developing countries to have the financial autonomy as it protects their financial security thereby helping them create the new digital currencies.

Whereas Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao had later on clarified that the exchange does not position Venus as the rival to Libra. 

For a tweet that said, Binance is ready to dominate the world and launch Project Venus the rival Facebook’s Libra is developing localised stablecoins worldwide, where Zhao wrote they were pushing adoption and not domination as always happy to co-exist which should help Libra in case you are thinking about it and will leave it at that. 

As it partners with 27 companies to launch Libra, it includes PayPal, Visa, Coinbase, Uber, and Mastercard whereas Binance did not announce partners for Venus yet. As the truth is revealed, the company has instead announced that it is coming to be looking to create the new alliances as well as partnerships with governments, corporations, those technology companies and as also other cryptocurrency companies and the projects that are involved in the much larger blockchain ecosystem comes to empower the developed and developing countries to spur new currencies. 

The Brighter Crypto News Is That Sec Says Tokens Are Securities

With a little boost earlier after a dark month of crashes, stablecoins, and birthdays, crypto has news to be determined where SEC ruled that two ICO issuers, CarrierEQ Inc., and Paragon Coin Inc were, therefore, selling securities instead of the so-called utility tokens. 

As Pamela Sawhney of the SEC wrote, both of the companies agreed to return funds to harmed investors, registering the tokens as securities, filing periodic reports with the Commission thereby paying penalties. Here it comes as the first few cases of the Commission imposing civil penalties solely for ICO securities offering registration violations. 

Thereafter the release said that 

It was observed that Boston based start-up Airfox had therefore raised approximately $15 million worth of the digital assets and financing the development of the token denominated ecosystem starting with a mobile application allowing users in the emerging markets to earn tokens exchanging them for data by interacting with advertisements. As an online entity, Paragon had on the other hand raised approximately $12 million worth of the digital assets to develop and implement the business plan adding blockchain technology to the cannabis industry and working toward legalisation of cannabis. Finally, it was found that neither Airfox and the Paragon had registered their ICOs according to the federal securities laws, and nor did they qualify for an exemption to the registration requirements. 

A sort of the damn the torpedoes for the fintech set, this behavior was the rage at the beginning of the year as there is no clear guidance available for filing security tokens as essentially the pieces of the company equity versus the utility tokens that are in theory used within the company ecosystem. The ICOed companies contorted themselves into all sorts of knots appearing to fit their utility token within the torturous confines of securities law. 

Finally, The Conclusion

As Stephanie Avakian, the co-director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division states, they have made it clear that the companies, therefore, issue securities through ICOs of the cryptocurrency is required to comply with the existing statutes and rules governing the registration of securities. However, these cases are telling those who are considering taking similar actions that they continue to be on the lookout for the violations of the federal securities laws concerning digital assets. Thereby the SEC had fined both companies $250,000 each whereas the future ICOs at least in the US will do well to keep this in mind.