On the opening day of Messari Mainnet 2021, New York City’s long-awaited first crypto conference since the start of COVID-19, reports came blazing in via a viral tweet that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission had served a subpoena to an event panelist at the top of an escalator in broad daylight. While it’s still not entirely clear who was served (or why), this isn’t the first time the SEC has encroached upon the crypto industry in full view of the public. Let’s go back a mere two months. On July 20, 2021, SEC Chair Gary Gensler issued his …
The crypto community and Wall Street converged last week in Nassau, Bahamas, to discuss the future of digital assets during SALT’s Crypto Bahamas conference. The SkyBridge Alternatives Conference (SALT) was also co-hosted this year by FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange. Anthony Scaramucci, founder of the hedge fund SkyBridge Capital, kicked off Crypto Bahamas with a press conference explaining that the goal behind the event was to merge the traditional financial world with the crypto community: “Crypto Bahamas combines the crypto native FTX audience with the SkyBridge asset management firm audience. We are bringing these two worlds together to create a …
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s chairperson Gary Gensler announced this month that the crypto industry should not escape the purview of the regulator. He highlighted that decentralized finance (DeFi) trading and lending protocols need particular attention when it comes to investor protections. Regulation can extend into a menu of options that covers custody, reporting, counterparty verification and asset classification and issuance. Reports are surfacing that people are waiting with bated breath on how the SEC will regulate the DeFi industry, but Germany's Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, also known as BaFin, has found a way to apply existing securities …
As discussed in the previous article, Telegram is a popular global instant messaging company. In 2018, it sold contractual rights to acquire a new crypto asset that it was developing (to be called Grams) to a group of accredited (and wealthy) investors around the world. Telegram raised about $1.7 billion from 171 investors, including 39 U.S. purchasers. This was a prelude to the planned launch of Grams, which was to occur about a year and a half later in October 2019. This two-step process — where a crypto entrepreneur sells contractual rights to acquire a crypto asset upon launch in …
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged Russian analytical agency ICO Rating for $268,998 for violating anti-touting provisions, according to an announcement on Aug. 20. In the announcement, the SEC claimed that ICO Rating violated the anti-touting provisions of Section 17(b) of the Securities Act of 1933 by failing to disclose payments it received from initial coin offering (ICO) issuers it rated and published on its platform. Melissa Hodgman, Associate Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division, said: “The securities laws require promoters, including both people and entities, to disclose compensation they receive for touting investments so that …