“Treasury Committee calls for regulation of crypto as gambling”

May 17, 2023 | Currencies

If you google ‘Crypto’, top of the list are ‘Top Crypto Gambling Sites’, a recognition that it is more than a tad dodgier than your standard investment. The move to treat it as a gamble rather than a financial product is more, however, a recognition of the impossibility of actually regulating it or them. If your crypto punt goes belly-up, who’s going to pay you compensation? Some untraceable bloke on a computer in the Middle or Far East? I don’t think so. And unless the fees we pay to the FCA increase substantially (and they’re already pretty substantial), they’ll never afford the IT talent needed to understand and unravel crypto currencies’ impossible algorithms (me, neither). If you’re mad enough to dream the impossible dream or have plenty  you can afford to lose, fine. Otherwise, our advice remains, as it always has, to avoid like the proverbial.

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El Salvador plans to make Bitcoin its official currency

I avoid recommending stuff which even I don’t understand. That’s where I am with Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies. The cost of mining them, for example: aren’t they just computer algorithms? Could I coherently explain a computer algorithm? Yes, many, including one or two...