Finally, Michael Bloomberg, the US media billionaire, has taken a step back from his electoral career within the Democratic party. After the poor results obtained in Super Tuesday, he has decided to leave the party in the hands of Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, since the day after Bloomberg resigned, the fourth in contention and only woman, Elisabeth Warren, also did so.
In the alternative currencies or cryptocurrency market, there was speculation that the former mayor of New York was the sector’s candidate, because he had been the only one who in his campaign to lead the Democratic party had spoken directly about the issue.
Specifically, Bloomberg said that he intended to speak with regulators to clarify the rules and undertake a reform of the sector, whose regulation is fragmented and undeveloped, he said. In his proposal on cryptocurrencies, Bloomberg stated that he would seek clarity on complicated aspects such as the sale of tokens, consumer protection, the valuation of alternative currencies or the requirements for financial institutions that have these digital assets.
The sector appreciated the intentions of the candidate because it recognizes the risks that the most innovative companies will move away from it due to the lack of clarity of the regulations. The campaign focused on the fact that cryptocurrencies are the spearhead of innovations that can provide ‘healthy competition’ in the financial services industry.
You have to start considering them seriously.
It is true that cryptocurrencies have not yet reached the global market and remain the niche of a small group of investors, but what no one can deny is the volume of dollars that are at stake. As of today, the altcoin market capitalization is $260 billion.
In addition, there are companies with a strong technological depth such as Facebook that are considering launching their own cryptocurrency, so – as Bloomberg said – the next president of the United States will have to answer many questions about alternative currencies.
However, Bloomberg was not the first candidate to take cryptocurrency seriously and to make promises about clearer legislation for the sector. The first was Andrew Yang, who dropped out of the presidential race early.
Meanwhile, the current president of the North American country, Donald Trump, has barely spoken about cryptocurrencies once since he took office. It was last July when he declared himself “little fan of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on air.”
Well, bitcoin alone today accounts for more than half of the global cryptocurrency market and has a market capitalization of $167 billion. Yang and Bloomberg thus have a compelling argument to consider cryptocurrencies as something more serious. Because, for not being money, having a highly volatile value and being based on air, they are moving a lot of money and that is something that cannot be ignored if you are an investor.
