From what I read recently, China created a government-backed fund to finance startups.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphjennings/2018/04/26/china-is-tightening-its-grip-on-cryptocurrency-to-promote-rather-than-purge-it/#3ab4f6aa5482

But in general the attitude towards crypto remains restrictive in China, imho.
And I think that one of the most important reasons is the continuing fight against capital outflow. China experienced enormous flight of capital in 2016. Capital outflow reached $725bln that year. The situation became better in 2017 but the amount of "shadow capital flight" has been on the same level since 2015. And cryptocurrencies are among the instruments used to avoid capital controls.
I suppose that government will continue its battle against capital outflow and the crypto will remain uder pressure.

I think I found the source.
http://avn.info.ve/contenido/certificadas-16-casas-cambios-que-trabajar%C3%A1n-criptoactivos

It also reports quoting the President that Petro presale generated $3.3bln of revenue. But if I am correct this contradicts to the earlier announcements about $5 bln made from this presale.
Is there any official report with the ICO results?

Yeah, I already realized my mistake of mixing two bodies, thanks for your note.

I was talking about the Constituent Assembly. As far as I see the National Assembly is still opposed to Petro.
So what can be said about the power of this Constituent Assembly? Will it really help Petro become widely used or is it only a formality?


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-12/venezuela-says-government-bodies-must-soon-accept-cryptocurrency

Bloomberg reported that referring to the government’s Official Gazette.

They also write about creation of a national Cryptocurrency Treasury which is said to be " in charge of overseeing everything from their emission to trading". I was unable to find more reliable sources on that. Does anybody have them?

What do you think about the news on the National Assembly backing el Petro at last? And the information that Petro will become accepted by government bodies in 120 days?

Is there any activity or legal preparations within the country in connection to this news?

Based on the info I encounter the work is actively in progress. Bank of Russia and some major commercial banks are working together on a national ethereum-based blockchain called Masterchain.

According to the BIS classification (https://www.bis.org/cpmi/publ/d174.htm) this concept looks like wholesale CBDC. It will help facilitate payments in financial markets and interbank transactions.
I think that creation of a wholesale CBDC is a question of near future. Unlike a general purpose digital currency which could act as a substitute for cash/commercial bank money and would require much more research and regulatory changes.

Concerning the Finance Ministry, they have introduced a draft of law recently which would effectively enable doing ICOs in Russia. Not sure which secret flows you mean though, but from what I see they look at crypto even more favorably than the central bank.

I have been monitoring Venezuelan el Petro since the start of the year.

From the latest news I saw the National Assembly approved the currency at last.
https://news.bitcoin.com/venezuela-approves-decree-use-cryptocurrencies/

Also there were reports that the government issued a decree stating that all government bodies and state companies should prepare to accept el Petro as legal tender in 4 months:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-12/venezuela-says-government-bodies-must-soon-accept-cryptocurrency

Can somebody comment on the situation?
Also I am still unable to find any information on the exact volume of foreign currency the country managed to attract during ICO - the data I found were misleading.

If there are any people from Venezuela here:what is really happening with this currency? Can there be seen any signs of preparations for transactions in Petro inside Venezuela?

https://vo.rbc.ru/vo/freenews/5a4365f79a79472a72e7c9c0

Any comments on this? Looks like the plant is going bankrupt.

Any news regarding this project? What is its status?

Personally I strongly believe that it is a classical example of a bubble, I called it "a philosophical question" just because many of us disagree on this, like you for instance.

I am also puzzled by all these predictions about BTC reaching $500k, $1 mln, etc. Let's just do some simple math. Assuming we have now a total supply of 16,529,587 BTC and this supply remains the same when the price of one BTC hits 500 000USD, the whole market capitalization will be 8 264 793 500 000 USD. Obviously it will be much higher because the BTC supply volume will rise. If you take the maximum amount possible of 21 mln BTC priced at 500000 USD this will make the market cap of 10 500 000 000 000 USD. What is 10.5 trillion USD in real life? It almost equals the whole size of the US economy($18.6 tn). And it is a bit larger than the whole Chineese bond market ($9.4 tn) which is one of the largest markets in the world consisting of hundreds of instruments. 
Well, I can imagine the whole crypto market comprised of thousands of cryptocurrencies reaching the capitalization of the third largest bond market in the world. But only one instrument getting there? No, this is extremely unlikely.


This is a good point about Nasdaq! It rose from 100 points in 1971 to 3940 points in 1999 before the crash. So, it took Nasdaq 29 years to grow 39x times. Compare this to 430000x in 7 years 


This is true about being sceptical. However I think many of us didn't even know about Bitcoin in 2009-2010 and this is the problem. I think that it would be great to discuss things which we are sceptical about now, who knows maybe we will stumble across the next bitcoin somehow)

So, with bitcoin trading near $4300 now its return rate on investment (considering you bought it somewhere in 2010 for $0.01) equals 43 000 000 %. Whether it can be considered a bubble or not remains more of a philosophical question, but it is obvious that we will not observe the similar growth rate in bitcoin in the coming years. (Personally I think that bitcoin is way overpriced due to a sudden public and regulative interest, but it does not mean we cannot make money on it )

Which brings the question about other opportunities to get this kind of return. I suppose these opportunities should be yet unknown to general public like bitcoin was in 2010. You can think about altcoins/ICO's, but many altcoins are just copies of bitcoin in one way or another, their prices are highly correlated with bitcoin only with higher beta(more volatile), and a lot of people already know about them and invest in them, which limits their potential growth.

Considering ICO, personally, I am very pessimistic about them now. I think that the majority of current ICOs are merely scams, and because of all this  ICO-hype you are very unlikely to determine the project which will become the next Google (if there is any at all). Anyway, the point is that even with ICOs you will hardly earn the equivalent return of bitcoin in 2010-2017 due to the market becoming more effective and regulated and as a result less volatile.

So in order to get this kind of excessive return we need to identify the next likely bubble, buy into it and wait until it becomes famous like the bitcoin. Do you think such instruments exist in blockchain world? Or you would bet on other tech sectors?
 

  

But you do not have to trust a bank. If you had this amount of money your best idea would be to diversify through different instruments:bank deposits, sovereign bonds, stock market, real business. Why would you risk holding all your wealth in one instrument instead? This is the riskiest scenario

If this really happens, it will be great news. Keeping some ARC in the hope for this.

a lot of unlucky investors

This is quite a brave prediction. It means that bitcoin price will be $340 000 and its market cap will equal approx 5,6 tn USD.
The whole US debt market has a capitalization of 39.6 tn USD and it is the largest market in the world consisting of hundreds of instruments. And we are talking about just 1 instrument here reaching 14% of its capitalization.

This is highly unlikely imho.

Who is mr. Gazaev?

Add me please, thanks.

In order to pump it and sell our own stocks?

What is the return on investment mechanism?

Good luck with the coin anyway

Hey, is there any guide on how to settle a masternode for this currency?