Dear Steemit friends,

today i got a notification about the decision by Shapeshift what caught my attention!

Shapeshift regulation efforts

Shapeshift recently announced to leave the state of Washington due heavy burden by regulators and to protect their customers from hackers and the watching regulators.

The statement by Shapeshift show how affronted the company feels

We believe the position that Washington’s regulators have taken is unethical, wasteful, and reckless. We cannot expect the same people, and the same thinking, that designed, built, and promoted the legacy fiat financial system to do what is needed to build a better alternative.

I'm personally like Shapeshift for it's ease of use. It was always a very convenient and fast way to exchange cryptocurrencies. The fees are bit higher but if you wish fast and direct exchange it's one of the best services i think.

Shapeshift makes clear that they are move on whether they are accepted in Washington state or not. That's a sign for me that regulators have limited powers.

I already mentioned how the EZB is watching the crypto market in my post about TenX weeks ago. Now the market is even higher and raises the attention of governments and institutions especially regulators even more

picture taken from coinmarketcap.com

It looks like an uneven battle today where the stone was thrown by the Crypto David

Comparison Cryptocurrencies in the S&P 500 August 31th 2017

Rank	Symbol	Company	Market Cap
1	AAPL	Apple Inc.	$848,620M
..	..	..	..
25	HD	The Home Depot, Inc.	$177,450M
26	MRK	Merck & Co., Inc.	$172,570M
-	-	CRYPTOCURRENCIES	$168,617M
27	PEP	Pepsico, Inc.	$164,670M
28	INTC	Intel Corp.	$164,140M

source: https://cryptolization.com/

The market cap remains relatively small if you think that one company alone is 5 times bigger than the whole crypto market. That's the main reason why we have no strong regulation efforts currently but think of if the crypto market reaches 1 trillion or even more, interesting question.

How much regulation is possible?

Marit Hansen the Data Protection Commissioner of Schleswig-Holstein explains what crypto is, how it works and why crypto regulations are doomed to fail.

look at 14:30 min we are in the 4th wave of crypto:

NEED MORE CRYPTO!
CRYPTO IS THE FOUNDATION OF INFORMATION SOCIETY
TRY CRYPTO AND ATTEND CRYPTO PARTIES
..THEN THE FORCE WILL BE AWAKEN!

Why crypto regulation is doomed to fail | Marit Hansen | TEDxKielUniversity - video by TEDx Talks

What drives many companies in the crypto space?

I think it's a chance for the liberation from the fiat system and also from the technological standpoint an exciting and innovative approach to improve many applications where transfer of value is crucial. I think it's also a ongoing redistribution of wealth and there are fears by government who could lose their power if they can't control or adopt it. @dollarvigilante did a great post about