Texas takes action against possible crypto bubbles

Summary:

• Texas takes steps to crack down on companies luring consumers by promising “guaranteed 200% profit”

• France is going to lower cryptocurrency tax by 6 percentage points

• Dash struggles with its critical resistance  

The beginning of Thursday’s trading is bringing calmness across major virtual currencies. Bitcoin is falling ca. 0.8% at the time of writing while Ripple is bouncing off its resistance placed around $0.54. Let us remind that the latter surged earlier this week on the back of a bunch of news coming from the company. Namely, the firm revealed that it plans to open an office in Dubai expanding its activity to the Middle East. What’s more, it also suggested that some Middle East's financial institutions have already used Ripple in cross-border payments and have tested Ripple’s blockchain-based network. In today’s newsflow we’re focusing on two major topics.

First of all, the Texas State Securities Board informed earlier this weeks that it issued an emergency cease and desist order to an Australia-based cryptocurrency mining company and its affiliates. The regulator said that the crypto company offers so-called “guaranteed 200% profit” suggesting that each crypto mining power contract guarantees such the gain. It wrote in a statement that “The investments in the cryptocurrency mining program are ‘securities’ - Respondents are engaging in fraud in connection with the offer for sale of securities - and are making offers containing statements that are materially misleading or otherwise likely to deceive the public.”

The H4 chart is showing that Ripple is giving back its gains made earlier this week. After consolidating around $0.54 the price is moving downwards and looking at the chart one may expect that this move could continue at least toward $0.48 being fuelled by profit-taking. Source: xStation5

The 2019 French budget bill has been recently amended by adopting a cut of capital gains tax made on Bitcoin sales to 30% from 36.2%. As a consequence, the new tax rate will be the same as this applied to other non-real estate assets. According to Reuters the amendment must be approved in the final version of the budget bill by the broader parliament in order to become law, and if approved, the new tax will come into effect in January. Note that under Emmanuel Macron’s presidency France is trying to transform itself into a haven for business including the cryptocurrency business as well. Earlier this year the country adopted the Action Plan for Business Growth and Transformation (PACTE) aiming to make it easy for firms to operate in France. This plan also lays out legal guidelines regarding fundraising via token sales.