The Department of Justice is reportedly the latest to turn up the heat on last month's crazed markets. Citing unnamed sources, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the DoJ's fraud division and the San Francisco district attorney's office had launched probes into the brokers (read: Robinhood) and social-media platforms (read: Reddit) who were at the center of wild bull markets on stocks like GameStop and AMC weeks ago. A number of agencies have announced that they are looking into market manipulation concerns. The Securities and Exchange Commission released a cryptic statement to that effect as GME stocks were …

The four horsemen of U.S. financial regulation will meet to discuss market manipulation concerns resulting from the headline-grabbing drama surrounding GameStop stock last week. Per a Feb. 2 report from the Wall Street Journal, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is gathering the leadership of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Federal Reserve, possibly as soon as Thursday. The SEC already announced that it was looking into recent market manipulation. The inclusion of the CFTC and the Fed suggest that the conversation is going to extend far beyond Robinhood, Reddit and GameStop. Aside from the spillover …

For Jeremy Spence, also known as "Coin Signals," the news just gets worse. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has unveiled civil fraud charges against Spence for his investment scheme, which allegedly suckered investors out of over $5 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) based on false or misleading statements. As Cointelegraph reported, the Department of Justice arrested Spence earlier today on charges of wire fraud and commodities fraud that have maximum sentences of up to 30 years combined. The CFTC's civil complaint looks to return Spence's allegedly ill-gotten gains back to investors and to bar Spence from trading in commodity interest …

United States authorities have brought criminal charges against a crypto trader whom they say defrauded investors out of over $5 million. The Department of Justice announced on Tuesday that it had arrested Jeremy Spence. Between 2017 and 2019, 24-year-old Spence operated a crypto investment scheme under the name "Coin Signals," primarily via Twitter and Discord. The announcement quoted Federal Bureau of Investigation Assistant Director-in-Charge William Sweeney as saying: “As alleged, Jeremy Spence misrepresented the success of his investment platform in order to entice people to send money his way. Because his trading was less than profitable and significantly less successful …

Heath Tarbert is no longer the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, but he will remain one of its five commissioner In a CFTC announcement on Thursday afternoon, Tarbert followed through with his resignation, which he announced at the beginning of December. However, it was not clear at the time whether he would remain on the commission at all. Today's announcement confirmed that Tarbert would stay on as a commissioner, with a term that formally expires on April 13, 2024. In listing accomplishments during his 18-month run as chairman of the commission, crypto took on a leading role, with …

100x Group, BitMEX’s parent company and the holding structure for its platform, has joined Global Digital Finance, or GDF, a major industry association advocating for the adoption of digital assets. As a GDF patron board member, 100x will advocate for a more inclusive and better regulated digital financial system, BitMEX announced on Jan. 21. The new partnership with GDF extends 100x’s efforts to promote collaboration between the public and private sectors to drive mainstream adoption of crypto. “Greater public-private collaboration is the only way to realise the wide-scale adoption of digital assets and we will be championing an advance in …

Still facing a courtroom assault in the U.S. for allegedly facilitating money laundering, BitMex is trying to show regulators that it's trying. On Jan. 12, the legally besieged crypto exchange released a blog post advertising further work with blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. BitMex said its aim was "to identify, investigate, and stop illicit transactions." Chainalysis is known as a go-to solution for government entities looking to track crypto transactions. The firm has been instrumental to the Department of Justice's seizures of cryptocurrency, including over $1 billion in Bitcoin and its offshoots from an unnamed Silk Road hacker, as well as …

President-elect Biden has finally decided on his nominee to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. At least according to Reuters' anonymous sourcing in a Tuesday report, Gary Gensler will be Biden's nominee as SEC Chair. During the Obama administration, Gensler was the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in which capacity he was in charge of enforcing the many new provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act that followed the 2008 financial crisis. Gensler has spent most of the Trump years at MIT, teaching courses on digital assets and blockchain. If nominated, there is little doubt that a now-Democrat-controlled Senate would …

Paolo Ardoino, the outspoken chief technology officer of Bitfinex, took to Twitter this week to dispel concerns that Tether could be the next target of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. In response to a tweet from CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju, Ardoino said Tether adheres to strict Know Yor Customer/Anti-Money Laundering regulations set forth by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN. In other words, people who say Tether is less regulated are just spreading “FUD”— or fear, uncertainty and doubt. Ju’s original tweet said: “If SEC's next target is Tether, it's going to be very, …

A group of leading U.S. financial regulators has released a new statement on stablecoins. One of the headlining topics of crypto regulation news this year, stablecoins were the main topic of a Dec. 23 statement the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, or PWG. The PWG includes representation from the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The group's stated opinions were hardly revolutionary, mostly saying that stablecoin issuers would need to abide by all the typical rules of the road in terms of financial law. The regulators say that stablecoins need …

The crypto lobby seems to be cautiously optimistic about Biden's potential picks to lead the U.S.'s regulatory environment. That is, at least, according to a Thursday discussion hosted by TRM labs, featuring the executive directors of the Blockchain Association and Coin Center — respectively Kristin Smith and Jerry Brito. The pair got into a discussion of who they hope the Biden administration nominates to top regulatory agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, given that Janet Yellen seems to be a shoe-in to get the top spot at …

LabCFTC, the fintech-focused office of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has published a new intro to digital assets. Released on Dec. 17, the "Digital Assets Primer" includes basic definitions and overviews of digital asset markets, as well as a handy breakdown of the role of the CFTC and other regulators in establishing rules for these markets. The latest primer joins three others released over the course of LabCFTC's lifespan. The first, from October 2017, focuses on virtual currencies, but was in much more 101-level terms. While today's primer on digital assets is also designed as a basic overview rather than …