The EU Slaps Crypto

Yesterday, members of the European Union Parliament approved new regulatory measures that would prevent any anonymous cryptocurrency transactions. They agreed to a proposal that would require cryptocurrency service providers, such as exchanges, to collect KYC information from individuals moving more than 1,000 euros to so-called “unhosted cryptocurrency wallets.”

Unhosted wallets refer to non-custodial wallets, which do not rely on third parties. A few examples of non-custodial wallets include MetaMask and Ledger. 

“Under the new requirements agreed by MEPs, all transfers of crypto-assets will have to include information on the source of the asset and its beneficiary, information that is to be made available to the competent authorities,” a statement posted on the European Parliament website read.

The proposal has received an outcry from prominent members of the crypto community. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tweeted that under the new rule, Coinbase would have to report transfers of 1,000 euros from a self-hosted wallet to authorities.

The EU’s latest move runs in opposition to financial privacy (something almost universally guaranteed in the traditional financial system). That might seem surprising at its face given the EU’s progressiveness on data privacy and protection. However, the EU knows that where there is money to be made, there are often bad people. The proposal is likely meant to contest with money launderers, tax evaders, and other users participating in illicit activities. However, seeing as though the blockchain is far and expansive, it wouldn’t be hard for the lay-maxi to hit these quotas. 

90 lawmakers voted in favor of banning the tiniest anonymous cryptocurrency transactions, some members of the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) opposed many of the recommendations.

In an interview with CoinDesk, EPP economic spokesperson Markus Ferber said, “With this approach of regulating new technologies, the European Union will fall further behind other, more open-minded jurisdictions.”

Separately, another legal proposal discussed would prohibit payments to crypto service providers that are not compliant, such as those operating in the EU without authorization or those not affiliated with or established in any jurisdiction.

The legislation has yet to be approved in a tripartite process before it can be formally adopted by the EU Parliament, European Commission, and European Council. Although it remains to be seen whether the EU Parliament will listen to the crypto community or not, this vote demonstrates how complicated and difficult regulating cryptocurrencies can be — which is a warning bell for U.S. authorities attempting to regulate this market.

Bad Bears is a new player in the NFT market. The project entered the metaverse market by integrating a set of unique features into its non-fungible collections. To understand better its unique feature, we spoke with Tony Marchuk, CEO of Bad Bears.

ST: What is the Bad Bears project about? What are your plans for the near future?

TM: Bad Bears is an experiment in fixed-supply NFT crypto-economics. We believe in what we’re doing, so our entire team has been fully doxxed since the beginning. Each of the 5,555 Bad Bears are at the center of the Beartopia Metaverse. Bad Bears have exclusive access to future NFT drops (only purchasable with our native token, $MSK) and can propose and submit initiatives for the DAO to vote on. Last but not least, each Bad Bear generates a passive yield in our token.

We have lots of clever collaborations coming next month. We have recently chosen NFT Worlds as our metaverse partner. We’ll hold a vote via our DAO to select the best World on the platform where we will buy virtual real estate using the funds in the Bad DAO Treasury.

ST: The number of NFT projects is already so high. What makes your product unique?

TM: We are the first NFT project to ever offer a passive yield income based on a fixed token supply, which is 1 billion $MSK in total. To facilitate a stable growth in $MSK’s price, in the long run, we will never mint more coins than the current supply. At the same time, our closed-loop ecosystem ensures the value increases and stays in the economy.

Furthermore, as we want to reward our users for holding Bad Bears, our team is working hard to kickstart $MSK’s growth. First, we want to get $MSK on a Tier 2 crypto exchange and a Tier 1 platform after. When we achieve the second goal, we will be the first-ever passive yield project to be on a top exchange.

We allow our users to mint NFTs for as little as $5, which is a super low fee considering our project is on Ethereum. Moreover, we are currently working on a gas-free way to spend $MSK within our ecosystem to minimize the costs for our customer base and ease crypto newbie onboarding

ST: How did you come up with the idea for the MSK Token? What is the use case and How will it raise the value of every Bad Bear?

TM: We wanted to create an NFT that had real value, not just something based purely on the hype for people who want to make a quick profit. Therefore, our team has developed an idea to have an NFT earn you money. 

Launched on January 14th, $MSK is our native utility token that powers our closed-loop ecosystem. It is designed to fuel innovation and raise the value of every NFT we mint.

On April 25th, we will release 3,333 Bad Cub NFTs. Bad Cubs are born from Serums (we minted them approximately a week ago), consumables from our Bear Labs collection that could be used up to produce one-of-a-kind NFTs. In addition to yield multipliers, Bad Cubs offer additional perks and metaverse compatibility for holders.

As exclusive non-fungibles for Bad Bear holders, each Bad Cub will act as a 4X multiplier on one’s passive yield income. If $MSK hits $1, this means a Bad Bear NFT would earn $400 a day or $146k a year. After reaching this super important milestone, it will become an incredibly valuable NFT and a modern-day solution to investments. It’s time to say goodbye to real estate and welcome NFTs for generating a passive yield.

ST: There is a lot of discussion on the internet about whether or not Mishka Token is a scam. What’s your opinion on it?

TM: Unfortunately, the Web3 industry is riddled with scammers, rug pulls, and failed projects. As a team of RL business people and entrepreneurs, we are here to change the game and make the Web 3.0 world a safe place for Web 2.0 users to transition over to. And we would like to be a flagship for everything positive about the crypto, NFT, and metaverse spaces.

We have worked very hard to ensure that the community can trust us. We doxxed ourselves from the beginning. We regularly speak about our IRL lives on our AMAs. We are on CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko. We have a large liquidity pool as well as a solid and stable team. We listen to our communities’ worries and concerns and always work with them on a resolution. And most importantly, we work around the clock to ensure that our users’ investment is safe.

In short, there will always be people that spread FUD about any project. We believe in proving that we are the real deal by being transparent, such as showing that real people from our community are winning giveaways, including our upcoming Space competition.

ST: With such fierce competition, how do you plan on expanding your business this year?

TM: Our immediate goal is to get our marketing consistent across all channels. Organic, paid, PR, collabs, we see our marketing as a 24/7/365 approach.

We are also looking to increase our project’s utility. Currently, we are exploring more ways our community can spend $MSK within the closed-loop economy, such as buying merchandise, IRL parties, and IRL products.

At the same time, we continue to work closely with our solid and stable community. Where possible, we want to educate our investors that this is an excellent life-long HODL opportunity and not a dubious pump and dump scheme.

The metaverse is going to be our big play. We have purchased our World via NFT Worlds, and we are now very close to starting our work to populate it.

Though the layperson might know about Bitcoin and Ethereum, there are hundreds of other blockchains – all with their unique nuances, twists, and assets.. And in this era of many chains, that has created a problem for crypto maximalists.

That problem? Getting assets between chains. See, you can’t just send assets from Ethereum to a Bitcoin address… nor can you directly transfer assets from Solana to Polygon. Attempting to send your assets from one chain to another without some extra steps will certainly result in loss of funds – and that’s bad news.

That’s one reason behind the emergence of bridges, a technology which adds interoperability between chains. Bridges help users move assets that they have on one chain to another – and this has opened up a world of possibilities for ardent crypto traders, speculators, DeFi tinkerers, and arbitrageurs.  

In short: if one bridge, or many bridges, add support for a blockchain, it could mean a flurry of capital inflows to its ecosystem. Emergent blockchains such as Fantom, Avalanche, and Polygon can credit a healthy portion of their success to bridges.

That’s why one bridge’s decision to add support for the Polkadot parachain Acala, as well as its Kusama-based counterpart Karura, is potentially huge. As per the latest announcement, Wormhole will add the support for these chains – opening up a bridge between these new additions and existing giants such as  Ethereum, Avalanche, Terra, Solana.

Wormhole integration will allow users to send tokens to-and-from Acala and Karura. After that, tokens can be either converted into Polkadot and Kusama native assets or used as collateral to mint aUSD (a decentralized stablecoin on Polkadot) and kUSD (a Kusama stablecoin) tokens.

Karura will be the first to join Wormhole, followed shortly after by Acala. As soon as the bridge goes live, the networks will be opened up to outside capital – which numbers in the billions. 

However, while Wormhole’s added support for these chains will certainly play a role in their growth, bridges have been shown to have security shortcomings. Wormhole specifically was afflicted by  serious security vulnerabilities in the past when its Solana bridge was exploited in February, allowing a thief to make off with 120,000 Ethereum (worth $322 million at the time). As the demand for cross-chain interoperability solutions is set to remain high, addressing the security issues in due course is important so that the blockchain ecosystem can function smoothly.