Blockchain Association’s chief legal officer says “it would be absurd” for a United States court to rule that digital assets on private blockchains are securities, following a federal judge's decision to allow a lawsuit against Dapper Labs's NBA Top Shots NFTs to play out. U.S. attorney Jake Chervinsky made the comment after federal judge Victor Marreo denied a motion to dismiss a 2021 lawsuit that accused Dapper Labs of selling nonfungible tokens (NFTs) as unregistered securities. Chervinsky was among a host of lawyers on Twitter to reiterate that the judge’s denial of the motion does not mean a ruling has …

Cryptocurrency exchange CoinEx has been sued by the New York Attorney General, Letitia James, alleging the firm falsely represented itself as an exchange due to failing to register as a securities and commodities broker-dealer in the state. A 38-page petition filed by James in the New York Supreme Court on Feb. 22 alleged CoinEx “engaged in repeated and persistent fraudulent practices” and violated the state’s Martin Act — considered one of the most strict anti-fraud and securities regulation laws in the United States. She also asserted CoinEx listed various tokens that qualified as “both commodities and securities” naming Amp (AMP), …

On Feb. 13, a federal judge put the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission cases against former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried on hold. You’ll be forgiven if you missed this story — headlines and social media were dominated by the breaking news that the SEC was suing crypto firm Paxos for minting Binance’s stablecoin, Binance USD (BUSD). But we’re not here to debate whether stablecoins are securities. The Howey test has been discussed to death, and while it’s true that few people expect to profit from a token pegged to a fiat currency, the issue is …

California Representative Maxine Waters, ranking member of the United States House Financial Services Committee, has called for coordination and cooperation between government agencies and lawmakers to address crypto regulation. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Representative Waters suggested that recent enforcement actions on the crypto space from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) may have been to present the image of “doing something substantive and meaningful” following the collapse of major exchanges including FTX. According to Waters, the market crash and related bankruptcies of major firms gave U.S. lawmakers an opportunity of “getting accountability” in the …

The United States Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, said it had started an investigation of crypto lending firm Voyager Digital parallel to the company’s bankruptcy proceedings. In a Feb. 22 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, the FTC said it was investigating Voyager and its employees “for their deceptive and unfair marketing of cryptocurrency to the public”. The announcement followed Bankruptcy Judge Michael Wiles initially approving of a plan in which Voyager debtors would sell the firm’s assets to Binance.US for more than $1 billion. According to the FTC filing — an objection to …

Attorneys working on behalf of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried have agreed to pay for a security expert to assist the federal judge overseeing his fraud case in navigating modern encryption technology to aid in possibly modifying Bankman-Fried's bail terms. Bankman-Fried’s lawyers Christian Everdell and Mark Cohen sent a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan on Feb. 21 agreeing with his proposal for a technical professional to aid him. According to the letter, “the defense has already begun researching and contacting possible experts and anticipates being able to propose one or more potential candidates to the court by the end of …

Hong Kong’s ambition of becoming a cryptocurrency hub is reportedly seeing subtle support from the Chinese government, in what could be seen as a contrast to the mainland’s hard-line anti-crypto stance. In October last year, the government of Hong Kong floated the idea of introducing its own bill to regulate crypto and allow retail investors to “directly invest into virtual assets” that could possibly be in contrast to China’s widespread crypto ban. According to people familiar with the matter, Beijing officials have not been brazenly opposed to the idea. According to a Feb. 20 Bloomberg report, it is understood that …

Decentralized finance yield platform Stablegains has been sued in a Californian court for allegedly misleading investors and failing to comply with securities laws. On Feb. 18, plaintiffs Alec and Artin Ohanian filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the central district of California. In it they alleged that Stablegains, a DeFi platform launched in August 2021, diverted all of its customer funds to the Anchor Protocol without their knowledge or consent. Anchor Protocol offered yields of up to 20% on the Terraform Labs algorithmic stablecoin, Terra USD (UST). “As an early supporter of and investor in TFL [Terraform …

Representatives for Voyager's Unsecured Creditors have requested that former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, provide documents and appear in court remotely next week for a deposition. A court filing on Feb. 18 in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, stated that Bankman-Fried has been served a “Subpoena to Testify at a Deposition in a Bankruptcy Case.” It was served by the Official Committee for the Unsecured Creditors of Voyager Digital Holdings, a bankrupt crypto lending exchange, who stated that he must appear for the “remote deposition” on Feb. 23. It also stated that Bankman-Fried produce …

Judge Lewis Kaplan reportedly targeted Sam Bankman-Fried’s internet usage in a hearing aimed at reviewing the former FTX chief executive officer use of a virtual private network, or VPN. According to a Feb. 16 tweet from NPR correspondent David Gura, Judge Kaplan may have suggested that Bankman-Fried be denied access to any electronic device and the internet as a condition of his bail. Though SBF’s lawyers reportedly said there was no television in Joe Bankman’s and Barbara Fried’s California home — where the former FTX CEO has largely been confined since his arraignment in the United States in December — …

The alleged exploiter of the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Mango Markets, Avraham Eisenberg, is seeking to keep his share of crypto gained from his so-called “highly profitable trading strategy.” On Feb. 15 attorneys for Eisenberg filed an opposition in a New York District Court to a lawsuit from Mango that asked for $47 million in damages plus interest starting from the time of Eisenberg’s October 2022 attack that drained around $117 million from the protocol. The lawyers argued that Eisenberg shouldn’t need to pay back any more funds to the DeFi platform due to a settlement agreement he reached with …

Wyoming lawmakers have passed a bill that will prohibit courts in the state from forcing someone to disclose their digital asset private keys, with one minor exception. The bill was passed through the Wyoming House of Representative in the state’s 67th general session of 2023 on Feb. 15. The law will officially come into effect on Jul. 1, 2023. “No person shall be compelled to produce a private key or make a private key known to any other person in any civil, criminal, administrative, legislative or other proceeding[s]” in the state of Wyoming, the incoming law reads. The law includes …