The Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler, have partnered with Nasdaq Inc. to crack down on fraudulent bitcoin and ether trading on their cryptocurrency exchange, the Gemini Trust Company.
The billionaire bitcoin brothers said the alliance furthers their goal of promoting a transparent, rules-based virtual currency exchange.
“Since launch, Gemini has aggressively pursued comprehensive compliance and surveillance programs, which we believe betters our exchange and the cryptocurrency industry as a whole,” Tyler Winklevoss, CEO of Gemini, remarked in an April 25 statement . “Our deployment of Nasdaq’s Smarts Market Surveillance will help ensure that Gemini is a rules-based marketplace for all market participants.”
The partnership is the first such arrangement between a high-profile stock exchange like Nasdaq and a digital currency platform such as Gemini. The move comes amid escalating regulatory scrutiny of the budding cryptocurrency industry, whose market value now tops $395 billion.
Former PayPal CEO Bill Harris trashed bitcoin as the “ greatest scam in history ” and “a colossal pump-and-dump scheme” in a blistering take-down this week.
Crypto Market Dogged By Scams And Hacks
Bitcoin — the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization — has recently become a media darling , but its erratic price fluctuations and the growing number of hacks on crypto exchanges have cast a negative shadow on the entire market.
On April 17, the office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman launched an inquiry into the opaque crypto ecosystem by sending questionnaires to 13 top digital asset exchanges.
The Winklevoss twins were the first CEOs to publicly announce their support for the Attorney General’s investigation, as the Inquisitr has reported.
Bitcoin Billionaire Tyler Winklevoss Praises NY Atty General For Probing Crypto Exchanges https://t.co/u52hpr0bfS –
— ODDS (@ODDSchain) April 17, 2018
“Gemini applauds the Attorney General’s focus on this industry and the Virtual Markets Initiative,” said Tyler Winklevoss. “And we look forward to cooperating with and submitting our responses to the questionnaire that has been circulated.”
However, the collective response from the decentralized, largely unregulated cryptocurrency industry has not been positive. Jesse Powell, the CEO and founder of Kraken, slammed the New York Attorney General’s probe in an epic Twitter smackdown , as the Inquisitr previously reported.
“Somebody has to say what everybody’s actually thinking about the NYAG’s inquiry,” Powell said. “The placative kowtowing toward this kind of abuse sends the message that it’s ok. It’s not ok. It’s insulting.”
The NYAG’s questionnaire is due back by May 1. It should provide some enlightening responses about the 13 largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world.
