Regulation

Defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor, James K. Filan, expects the infamous Hinman Speech documents to be released to the public by June 6, citing a previous court order. The Hinman documents relate to a 2018 speech from former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) corporation finance division director Bill Hinman, who essentially stated that Ether (ETH)

Lawmakers from South Korea are pushing to enshrine stricter regulation of digital assets in the wake of a gruesome murder case involving digital assets.  According to a May 18 Bloomberg report, a Korean woman was abducted on March 29 and later murdered in a dispute believed to have stemmed from a disagreement over cryptocurrency-related losses

Pakistan will ban cryptocurrency services operating in the country and never legalize crypto trading, Minister of State for Finance Aisha Ghaus Pasha said at a session of the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue on May 16, according to multiple local media reports. Other officials, including State Bank of Pakistan director Sohail Jawad, spoke

A Greenland Holdings subsidiary is applying for a virtual asset trading license in Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post reported. It is the first state-owned Chinese company to do so.  Greenland Financial Technology Group CEO James Geng Jing told the Hong Kong newspaper that a new company dedicated to virtual asset trading would be

On May 15, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate of the People’s Republic of China, the national agency responsible for legal prosecution, shared its thoughts on the non-fungible token (NFT) market. In an article published, three authors laid out the prosecutors’ vision of the market risks and the following reasons to enforce it more actively. The article

The trading of so-called “unbacked cryptoassets” such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) should be regulated as gambling rather than a financial service, a panel of British lawmakers said in a new report.  The United Kingdom is currently working on a crypto regulatory framework that would mix existing financial asset laws with new crypto-specific rules.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI and co-founder of Worldcoin, recently testified before Congress alongside IBM’s chief of trust, Christina Montgomery, and NYU professor Gary Marcus.  The Senate judiciary subcommittee session represented Altman’s first official appearance before Congress, giving senators the opportunity to question the OpenAI CEO concerning his company’s views on regulation. ‘If this

The European Council has approved updated rules that extend tax reporting requirements to include transfers of crypto assets. This is the eighth version of the Directive on Administrative Cooperation (DAC), which is a set of procedures for automatic information sharing between European governments for tax purposes.  DAC8 was proposed in December and approved May 16

The United States Democratic Party has expressed its intent to back the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) total authority over crypto in a memo circulated among committee members before a hearing. The documents were shared on social media, causing backlash from crypto community members.  On May 10, the documents were shared on Twitter, highlighting key

The 2022 crypto bank runs — caused by the failure of multiple ecosystem giants — have had a lasting impact on the crypto industry. A new research report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (FRBC) has identified several key factors and catalysts that accelerated last year’s crypto crisis. The report identified that withdrawals by crypto whales

The Economic and Financial Affairs Council of the European Union — comprising finance ministers of all member states — has given the green light to the highly-anticipated Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation after a vote on May 16. Finance ministers from 27 member states voted in favor of the MiCA bill, and amendments to several regulations

Disgruntled creditors of the bankrupt cryptocurrency lending firm BlockFi have submitted a new court filing in response to the company’s latest restructuring plan. On May 12, BlockFi outlined its Chapter 11 plan of reorganization in a filing with the United States Bankruptcy Court in Trenton, New Jersey. The firm said that selling BlockFi might not

Investigations around the collapse of Signature Bank point toward illiquidity circumstances and poor management. However, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) chairman, Martin J. Gruenberg, believes that the bank’s failure to understand the risks associated with cryptocurrencies expedited its fall. Speaking at the hearing on “Oversight of Prudential Regulators,” Gruenberg highlighted the recent failures of

The U.S. The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) has finally given a formal response in court in relation to Coinbase’s petition for clear crypto regulation, stating that any rulemaking may take years and that enforcement actions will continue in the meantime. According to court documents filed on May 15, the SEC argued that it is under

The chair of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Gary Gensler has hit back at Coinbase’s petition compelling the agency to provide a clear stance on crypto regulation, arguing that there are already adequate laws in place. In a May 15 keynote speech at the Financial Markets Conference, Gensler was asked about the

The United States Secret Service owns crypto, has its own NFT collection, and has praised blockchain technology’s ability to fight financial crime, Reddit users learned during a recent ask-me-anything (AMA). On May 15, representatives from the United States Secret Service San Francisco Field Office and the Bay Area Regional Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT) opened

President of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank Neel Kashkari participated in a fireside chat at the Minnesota Transportation Conference & Expo on May 15. While he spoke mostly about topics unrelated to cryptocurrency and blockchain, he gave a blunt assessment of central bank digital currency (CBDC) during the Q&A after his presentation. “We’re studying it,”

Japan is the biggest loser of cryptocurrency to North Korean hackers, according to a study by blockchain analyst Elliptic. Asian countries make up three of the four top targets for the so-called Hermit Kingdom’s hackers, Elliptic found. The study, commissioned and reported on by Japanese financial publication Nikkei, looked at losses of cryptocurrency from cyberattacks

The G7 committee recently met in Niigata, Japan, to discuss, among other topics, the global financial implications for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and the laws governing the transfer of cryptocurrency assets. In a communique summarizing the discussions, the committee reiterated its support for developing CBDCs with the caveat that further investigation was needed to

Last week was harsh for the United States Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), with industry figures and officials publicly criticizing the regulator.  May 8 was the deadline for feedback on the SEC’s proposed custody rule, and there was feedback aplenty. Andreessen Horowitz’s general counsel Miles Jennings called the proposal a “misguided and transparent attempt to wage