Crypto news: Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson says US is trying to ‘kill’ blockchains

A crypto founder has issued a grim warning about the digital currency despite record windfalls in the past week, with worse on the horizon.

A top crypto boss has issued a grim warning about the digital currency despite record windfalls in the past week.

Over the weekend, bitcoin topped the all-important $US60,000 mark ($A82,351) for the first time since April amid expectations that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will approve an exchange-traded fund based on futures contracts tied to the volatile cryptocurrency.

The SEC is set to allow the first US bitcoin futures ETF to begin trading next week, a step viewed as key by crypto investors to winning over more widespread adoption among the investing public.

The news buoyed the rest of the crypto market as well with other coins also experiencing gains.

But Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, the fourth largest cryptocurrency in the world, thinks the US government is still determined to stop digital coins in their stride.

Mr Hoskinson, who is from the US, warned in a conference late last week that his government is doing everything in its power to “kill” cryptocurrency because it feels “threatened” by the digital asset.

Speaking at a conference in South Africa as part of the Cape Innovation and Technology Initiative last week, Mr Hoskinson slammed those running the US treasury.

“We’re after inclusive accountability, resilience, decentralisation, we’re after rules, terms and transitions that do not require transnational agreements, or nation states or corporations to play nice,” he said of the purpose behind creating cardano.

“In DC, the Treasury Department does everything in its power to try to kill our industry, because our industry is threatening,” Hoskinson said.

“A $US2 trillion ($A3 trillion) industry just pops up in our backyard, and my government’s trying to kill it.”

He indicated it was bureaucracy and narrow-mindedness that was causing their reticence.

“I’m an American, I love my country,” the entrepreneur explained.

“One of the things that makes America pretty special is we change a lot, always mixing and melting.

“We’re kind of the original rebel. … But somewhere along the way we went from being the original rebels and revolutionaries to ‘it takes me two years to get a permit to fix my fence’.”

The US government has indicated that it wants to regulate cryptocurrency, with their being very few restrictions to trading the digital coins currently.

The coins have been known to facilitate money laundering and scams as well as fluctuating wildly, affecting people’s livelihoods.

Late last month, for the first time ever, the US black-listed a cryptocurrency, Russia-based Suex.io, over concerns it was a payment system for a ransomware attack.

Around the same time, China’s central bank banned cryptocurrency, saying all financial transactions involving blockchains were illegal.

However, the US has said it has no intentions of going to the extreme step of banning everything.

Over in Australia, the regulator, ASIC, said it “urges Australians to be wary of investing in crypto-asset related financial products and services”.

Charles Hoskinson created cardano in 2015 and launched it in 2017.

He is also one of the eight original founders of ethereum, another cryptocurrency ranked second in the world.

The cardano coin is known as ADA on the crypto market, which is an homage to Augusta “Ada” King, or Ada Lovelace, a 19th-century British countess largely regarded as the first computer programmer.

She was also the daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron.

Cardano is currently sitting on $US2.14 ($A2.87) per coin with a market capitalisation of $US70.1 billion ($A94.4 billion).

The relatively new cryptocurrency has surged nearly 2000 per cent since the start of this year.

This news is republished from another source. You can check the original article here.

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