Merrill Lynch prohibits trading on bitcoin funds, Putin wants his cryptocurrency

        While Merrill Lynch has imposed on its customers and financial advisers the ban on buying bitcoins, Putin wants to make his cryptocurrency. The US investment bank fears the adequacy and sustainability of bitcoin and has applied the purchase ban to all accounts, as well as imposing almost 17,000 of its advisors not to approve client requests to trade on the Grayscale Investment fund. Trust which only deals with investments in cryptocurrency.

This was revealed to him by sources close to the dossier this morning. This measure extends a policy already in place to prohibit access to bitcoin futures. In more detail, Merrill Lynch's customers who have long held accounts that rely on brokers to exchange bitcoins will be able to maintain them, unlike the account holders who expect the possibility of consulting with an advisor upon the payment of fees.

On the contrary, Putin wants to make his bitcoin. A guaranteed, state-controlled cryptocurrency that helps Moscow bypass Western sanctions and attract foreign investment. This, according to Financial Times, the project to study the Kremlin, of which Putin has already asked its experts to evaluate effectiveness and feasibility in order to revive the economy.

Some Moscow officials, the Financila Times reported, said the Russian president has commissioned the work to create a cryptocurrency, while Russian state-run institutions are rushing to focus on blockchain, a database maintained by all. the participants in the network and which contains all the transactions carried out by the assignment of the first currency. New coins are automatically generated following a predefined algorithm that characterizes the evolution of the monetary base over time.

Sergei Glazev, Putin's economic advisor, told a recent government meeting that a cryptocurrency would be a useful tool to circumvent international sanctions. "This tool is well suited to sensitive activities on behalf of the state." We can settle accounts with our counterparts around the world without any regard for sanctions, "said Glazev, adding that the cryptocurrency would ultimately be" the same ruble , but with limited circulation "to allow the Kremlin to track each transaction.

After a summer meeting with Vitalik Buterin, the founder of the cryptocurrency Ethereum, born in Russia, Putin ordered his cabinet to develop a structure to regulate it. As with the Internet, which the Kremlin has widely learned to tame in recent years, interest in cryptocurrencies reveals Russia's desire to exploit a concept originally designed to be free from government influence. Blockchain technology uses cryptography to allow many parties to share and update an information record without relying on a central authority.

But the bitcoin offers its owner anonymity, favoring illegal activities under the counter, it is not clear how a cryptocurrency can help the companies and the Russians to escape international sanctions or to avoid an investigation by the US authorities. Furthermore, it is not clear whether the cryptocurrency will be issued by the Russian Central Bank or the commercial banks of the country and who would be able to open an account. "A cryptocurrency is not the answer in the short term," said Alan Waxman, head of corporate business of Gazprombank, a sanctioned Russian company. The Office for the Control of Foreign Property, a branch of the US Treasury that implements sanctions, "can find the means to avoid it," he added.

Meanwhile, if yesterday the bitcoin has recovered 15,000 in the wake of a Wall Street Journal article that the Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Peter Thiel, is betting on cryptocurrency, today falls 6.62% to 14.123. According to Wsj, the vendure capital company co-founded by Thiel (Founders Fund) bought 15-20 million dollars worth of cryptocurrency; now that investment is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Thiel, famous for having bet on companies in their first steps like Facebook, became particularly well known for supporting Donald Trump's candidacy in last November's presidential elections. It must be said that fund investors have explained that eventually the bitcoin could also be worth nothing.