Several storylines that had been long in the making dominated last week’s news cycle in the cryptocurrency policy and enforcement department. The Russian government has made another huge step on the path toward creating a tailored regulatory framework for digital assets, unveiling its consolidated view that crypto is to be treated as currency rather than swept under the rug of a blanket ban. While this movement in the direction of crypto’s formal legitimization is a welcomed development, a host of questions persists related to both the exact shape of the new regime and its enforcement. The biggest enforcement story of …

Commodity Futures Trading Commission chair Rostin Behnam is looking to members of Congress to address the commission’s lack of enforcement authority in the digital asset space. At a Wednesday hearing titled “Examining Digital Assets: Risks, Regulation, and Innovation,” Behnam told lawmakers with the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry that the CFTC’s authority was currently limited to addressing fraud and manipulation of digital assets without a clear regulatory framework. The CFTC chair added that because there was currently a patchwork of regulation and enforcement authority across multiple government agencies, the bulk of the agency’s actions taken in the last …

Whether regulations on stablecoins and digital assets should be addressed at the state or federal level was the topic of discussion among at least two U.S. lawmakers in a hearing for the House Committee on Financial Services. Speaking virtually at a Tuesday hearing titled “Digital Assets and the Future of Finance: The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets’ Report on Stablecoins,” North Carolina Representative and ranking committee member Patrick McHenry asked the committee to consider state-level regulatory frameworks in lieu of a comprehensive federal law on stablecoins. In response to McHenry, Jean Nellie Liang, the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance …

Twitter co-founder and Block (previously Square) CEO Jack Dorsey discussed the implications of a Bitcoin (BTC)-powered universal basic income (UBI) strategy with US congressional candidate and a full-time elementary school teacher, Aarika Rhodes. “Obscurity of information forces and incentivizes people to negative (financial) behaviors that don’t work for them, their community or family,” said Dorsey while pointing out the lack of transparency within the existing centralized financial system. “If there’s one thing to focus on in Bitcoin — the operations are transparent, the code is transparent, the policy is transparent.” This base foundation of BTC is what Dorsey believes has …

On Jan. 31, Meta, formerly known as Facebook, announced that it was pulling from its stablecoin project, Diem, formerly known as Libra. Intellectual property and other assets related to the operations of the Diem Payment Network were to be sold to Silvergate Capital Corporation, essentially meaning the end to Mark Zuckerberg and his corporations’ stablecoin aspirations, at least in their current shape. This also marks the end of a once-groundbreaking initiative that was revealed in 2019 with a promise to bring a global alternative to fiat money to Facebook’s 2-billion-strong user base. Here is how this plan went from the …

On Jan. 27, a group of eight U.S. lawmakers, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren, sent letters to the world’s six largest Bitcoin mining companies, demanding to reveal the detailed data on their electricity consumption. This isn’t the first time Senator Warren requested this information from a mining operation — last month a similar letter was sent to Greenidge Generation, which uses a natural gas plant to power its facility. These moves highlight the increasing regulatory pressure on crypto mining businesses in the United States. But, as last week’s Congress hearing showed, the growing scrutiny might turn out to be an …

North Carolina Representative Ted Budd submitted an amendment to the omnibus America COMPETES Act of 2022, specifically targeting the provision that would allow the Treasury Department to impose “special measures,” including surveillance and outright prohibitions, against “certain transmittals of funds.” As Cointelegraph reported, executives of crypto advocacy group Coin Center had earlier turned the spotlight on the provision, introduced by Connecticut Representative Jim Himes, that would scrap the existing checks – such as the requirement of public consultation and time limits on special measures orders – constraining the Treasury’s power to unilaterally prohibit financial transactions. If passed in its current …

A bipartisan group of members from the U.S. House of Representatives called on Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to clarify the language in the infrastructure bill signed into law in November around the definition of "broker". In a Wednesday letter, House Financial Services Committee ranking member Patrick McHenry and ten other representatives urged Yellen to reference the Keep Innovation in America Act to “ensure that any future guidance" in the November infrastructure bill would provide "the necessary clarity to the digital asset ecosystem." In addition to the reporting requirements, the lawmakers said that the Treasury Department should narrow the scope of …

In a letter to the leadership of the United States House Financial Services Committee, ranking member Patrick McHenry took a jab at “inconsistent treatment and jurisdictional uncertainty” inherent in U.S. crypto regulation and called for the Committee to take on its critical issues. McHenry, a Republican representing North Carolina, opened by mentioning that the Committee’s Democrat Chairwoman Maxine Waters is looking to schedule additional hearings addressing matters pertinent to the digital asset industry. He further stressed the need for identifying and prioritizing the key issues and achieving a “broad, bipartisan consensus” on the matters affecting the industry that holds immense …

Congresspeople currently HODLing or actively trading in crypto may have to stop doing so while in office if recent pushes to ban lawmakers from investing in stocks gain enough support. In a Monday letter addressed to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, 27 members of the U.S. House of Representatives called for action “to prohibit members of Congress from owning or trading stocks.” Among the bipartisan group of lawmakers who signed onto the letter was Illinois congressperson Bill Foster, who is also a member of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus. In addition, the letter seems to have support from …

On Jan. 20, the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee of the U.S. Congress House Energy and Commerce Committee convened a hearing to investigate the environmental effects of cryptocurrency mining. Despite the narrow focus, the conversation that ensued – which many industry experts appraised as a meaningful educational experience for the lawmakers – touched upon a range of blockchain-related issues and themes beyond energy consumption. Here is how it went down, and what comes next. Witnesses set the frame Following the opening remarks, the hearing kicked off with the witnesses delivering their testimonies. Bitfury CEO Brian Brooks made a point that it …

As U.S. Congress is preparing to take a thorough look at the energy use of crypto mining, the list of witnesses for the Thursday hearing contains more proponents of blockchain technology than its outright critics. The House Energy and Commerce Oversight Subcommittee announced a hearing on “Cleaning Up Cryptocurrency: The Energy Impacts of Blockchains” last week, with the event itself scheduled for Jan. 20. The focus of the hearing will be on the energy and environmental effects of crypto mining, specifically as it relates to networks that use proof-of-work, or PoW, consensus mechanism. A Committee on Energy and Commerce staff …