A new workgroup was announced today to create a set of industry standards. The group consists of leaders from some of the largest exchanges in crypto, with hopes of convincing investors who have stayed out of crypto to make the leap.
Crypto Bourses Going the Stock Way
In many ways, we are still in the Wild West of crypto adoption. There are tremendous opportunities to be found in the space, but anyone speculating blindly is likely to strike upon a high number of duds as well. And sometimes it can be difficult to tell the two apart, with the massive amount of projects entering the space, little regulation and even less oversight.
The Winklevoss-owned Gemini, along with Bitstamp, bitFlier, and Bittrex hope to impose some of that regulation and oversight by producing industry standards that all projects must meet to become listed on the main US exchanges.
This would work similarly to the equities market, where securities exchanges have long since joined together to create a private organization that ensures a modicum of quality in projects hoping to be listed on member exchanges, as well as combating issues like market manipulation and presenting a common front against regulators.
In the case of a crypto equivalent, many have called for regulation to combat these issues, whether regulators be government appointees or members of a private board. We are at a point in crypto now where we cannot even trust the trading volumes presented by the most popular exchanges since the exchanges themselves have an interest in making their volume appear as high as possible.
Coinbase Absent from Committee
All these issues aside, a voice with any claim of authority to represent the crypto community as a whole has been sorely lacking, and the ‘Virtual Commodity Association Working Group,’ as it is called, may well claim that role for itself in DC.
The working group will not find itself uncontroversial, however. It represents so far only American exchanges, and the most significant U.S. exchange of all, Coinbase, is not involved with the group at all. Nor can we forget that everyone who is represented by the group is the owner of a large and successful exchange.
If the workgroup persists and becomes the Association they are discussing, there is little so far to indicate that it will look after the interests of smaller exchanges, or of the average trader or investor in crypto, should those interests ever conflict with those of the leading exchanges.
The workgroup is set to meet for the first time in September 2018.
