G20 Summit Recap & The Regulation of Cryptocurrencies in 2018

G20 Conference

There is a ton of uncertainty about the future of cryptocurrencies at the moment. It is unclear how governments will regulate digital assets, and what kind of role they will play in day to day transactions. The G20 news summit was expected to address many of these uncertainties surrounding the future of cryptocurrencies. Here’s a recap of what happened in Buenos Aires at the summit a few days ago.

G20 Takeaways

Many of the world’s economic leaders gathered in Argentina a few days ago to create proposals for the regulations of cryptocurrencies, with the hope of enacting these proposals by this summer. The leaders at the conference consistently referred to cryptocurrencies as “crypto-assets”, indicating that they are treating cryptos more as assets rather than actual currencies. They did, however, acknowledge that these technological innovations do have the potential “to improve the efficiency and inclusiveness of the financial system and the economy more broadly”.

The good news for crypto bulls is that some of the world’s most prominent economic leaders did not view cryptocurrencies as something that would “pose risks to global financial stability at this time”, a statement made by the Bank of England governor Mark Carney. This means that it will be less likely that more countries around the world will ban the use of these digital assets. Rumors about a global crackdown on cryptocurrencies seem to be off the table for the moment. The attendees of the conference said they expect to have cryptocurrency regulations in place by July of this year.

Cautionary Notes

However, in this conference there were still leaders like Ilan Goldfajn, the head of the Brazilian central bank, who expressed concerns about some issues cryptocurrencies raise in “consumer and investor protection, market integrity, money laundering, and terrorist financing”. These concerns have caused major social media platforms such as Facebook and Google to ban all cryptocurrency-related advertisements on their platforms.

Cryptocurrency Advertising Bans

Unfortunately, due to the lack of regulation in this space, there have been several high profile scams of ICO’s and other cryptocurrency related products. From these companies’ point of view, you can see why they would take this precaution. These social media platforms, Facebook and Google, make the majority of their revenue from their advertising, so you can see why they would take precautions against such the unregulated and unpredictable cryptocurrency space at the moment.