In the past week, Bitcoin continued its downward trend, as a postponed Ethereum fork portended a market downturn; OKCoin CEO Star Xu acquired a Hong Kong-listed company; Huobi secures its FSA license in Japan; Russia’s Prime Minister stressed a bear market is not a reason to bury cryptocurrency.

 


1  Malaysia to Regulate ICOs and Cryptocurrency as Securities Offerings
According to a notice from the country’s Securities Commission (SC), the Capital Markets and Services (Prescription of Securities) (Digital Currency and Digital Token) Order 2019 will come into force on Jan. 15 following a statement from the finance minister on Jan. 14. The commission is expected to launch a framework by end of the first quarter.

2  Payment Services Bill in Singapore passed in Parliament
Ong Ye Kung, on behalf of the Minister-In-Charge of MAS, indicated that MAS will soon be consulting the industry when drawing up regulations implementing the Payment Services Act and proposing exemptions. The publication described, “It is expected to affect electronic wallets and digital payment tokens such as Grabpay, Bitcoin and ethereum.”



1  Ethereum Blog: Ethereum Constantinople Postponement Due To Security Alert
Jan. 16th, Ethereum Blog announced that The Ethereum Core Developers and the Ethereum Security Community were made aware of the potential Constantinople-related issues identified by ChainSecurity on January 15, 2019. The team was investigating any potential vulnerabilities and had determined that the best course of action will be to delay the planned Constantinople fork that would have occurred at block 7,080,000 on January 16, 2019.

2  OKCoin CEO Star Xu to Acquire HKEx-Listed Company
OkCoin founder, Star Xu, is aiming to purchase a 60% stake in a Hong Kong-Listed construction engineering firm known as LEAP Holdings Group Ltd.
According to shareholding disclosures shown on Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx), Star Xu has purchased about 3.18 billion shares of the company at the price of HK $0.152 (around US$0.02) per share, equally HK$484 million (about US$62 million) in total.


3  Huobi Secures Its FSA License in Japan
On Jan. 17, Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange Huobi, one of the largest players on the market, relaunched as a fully licensed platform in Japan after merging with the BitTrade exchange. BitTrade was one of only 16 crypto exchanges in the country to have secured a license from the FSA when Huobi acquired a majority stake in it last September.


4  Russia’s Prime Minister: Bear Market Is Not a Reason to Bury Cryptocurrencies

In the past week, Bitcoin continued its downward trend, as a postponed Ethereum fork portended a market downturn; OKCoin CEO Star Xu acquired a Hong Kong-listed company; Huobi secures its FSA license in Japan; Russia’s Prime Minister stressed a bear market is not a reason to bury cryptocurrency.