As the crypto market has been facing a long lasted winter and the Fed is adding fuel to the fire with its hawkish approach to fight inflation and protect users, global tech tycoons and industry experts have been pointing out their opinions on the situation.
Similarly, in an interview, Sasha Ivanov, founder of the Wave, a blockchain company allowing users to launch custom tokens, said that government authorities need to regulate the crypto industry to handle market manipulation and prevent investors from troublemaker projects.
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The CEO had a public spat with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in the past, and he alleged him of illegally manipulating the prices of his project, WAVES. In response to the interviewer’s question on how the issue was resolved, Ivanov noted;
“Crypto market manipulation is a sign of the times; as much as we in the space wish it wasn’t so, it’s there nonetheless. People with large balances and high intelligence levels can profit at the expense of retail traders. Our resolution is regulation, which is on its way. In the meantime, we have been working on our own solutions, such as the upcoming launch of PowerDAO to help us regulate our own ecosystem.”
The WAVES-backed stablecoin USDN lost its peg with the U.S. dollar many times in 2022. Lastly, it failed to defend its peg with the U.S. dollar and fell to $0.90 on August 26.
While speaking about how he fixed that issue and took control of the situation in April when USDN’s value plummeted to $0.80, Ivanov explained that April’s dumps occurred due to the six whale accounts borrowing Vires Finance’s liquidity excessively. As the interest amount continued to rise, it became impossible for overleveraged whales to repay the loan. As a result, it disrupted the prices of every cryptocurrency and likely of the WAVES. He further added;
“This is when I had to step in to take roughly $500 million worth of this bad debt into my own wallet to gradually repay it. Not doing so would have allowed those accounts to be liquidated, creating more selling pressure due to the quantity of USDN sold.”
Ivanov Points Crypto Regulation As The Only Way To Protect Users
Expressing his concerns over the Tornado cash ban, which has put the stablecoins like USDC and USDN under the radar, Waves’ CEO has pointed toward the regulation to keep transparency and ensure users’ protection. He said;
“While this may not be the most popular opinion, I believe we need regulation to protect users. As such, we are absolutely in favor of finding some real and efficient solutions through intelligent conversations with regulators. That being said, we need to respect the values of immutability, resistance to censorship, and decentralization when regulating – there has to be some agreement here otherwise the core values of crypto will be compromised.”
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Alongside supporting the vision of regulation, Ivanov also criticized the regulator’s move to put a blanket ban on Tornado cash and arrest its developer. He pointed out that the government misused its enforcement actions in this case and said it’s like sentencing jail terms to the inventor of a knife as he created it and criminals used it is his fault.
Featured image from Pixabay and chart from TradingView.com