Coinbase has seen information requests from law enforcement surge over the past year, the cryptocurrency exchange reported in its latest transparency report. The vast majority of the enquiries came from the United States and were tied to criminal investigations. Coinbase’s new transparency report covers the last four quarters ending with September. In that time, the exchange received 12,320 information requests from law enforcement, an increase of about 66%. The United States accounted for 5,304, or 43%, of those requests. The United Kingdom, Germany and Spain produced between 1,000 and 2,000 requests apiece. Those four countries accounted for 80% of requests, …

Welcome to Law Decoded, your weekly digest of all the major developments in the field of regulation. So, Sam Bankman-Fried, public enemy number one, won’t appear in front of Senators on Dec. 14, as he missed the deadline for responding to a Senate Banking Committee request. However, we could witness the entrepreneur appear before Congress even a day earlier, on Dec. 13. Replying to a thread of tweets from Representative Maxine Waters, Chairwoman of the Financial Services Committee, the former CEO of FTX expressed his willingness to testify at a committee hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives. John Ray, …

Eric Adams, who became mayor of New York City in January, has reportedly stood behind a campaign pledge to make the city a crypto hub, despite a drop in the price of many tokens in 2022. According to a Dec. 12 report from Slate, Adams suggested he still wanted New York City to be the “center of the cryptocurrency industry” — one of the plans he announced during his mayoral run in November 2021. The New York City mayor reportedly converted the first of his three paychecks while in office into Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) in January and February, …

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is nearing the completion of its investigation into cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which started in 2018. A report from Reuters suggests there is a conflict among US prosecutors over whether the gathered evidence is enough to press criminal charges against the crypto exchange and its executive or not. The 2018 investigation revolve around Binance’s compliance with the U.S. anti-money laundering (AML) laws and sanctions. The U.S. prosecutors were investigating charges related to unlicensed money transmission, money laundering conspiracy and criminal sanctions violations. The report noted that Binance’s defense attorneys held meetings in recent months …

Minnesota Senator Tom Emmer ha slammed United States Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler for his flawed “crypto information-gathering efforts” and insisted Gensler should appear before Congress to explain the cost of his “regulatory failures.” Emmer’s comments came from a Dec. 10 tweet to his 67,500 Twitter followers, where he made reference to a bipartisan Blockchain Caucus letter he co-authored to the SEC Chairman on Mar. 16. Emmer said, “we now know Gensler's crypto information-gathering efforts were ineffective” citing the collapses of the Terra ecosystem and bankrupt crypto platforms Celsius, Voyager and FTX. He declined to provide Congress with …

Another crypto-skeptic United States senator is on the loose, with Democrat Jon Tester boldly stating that he sees “no reason why” crypto should exist. Tester is the senior senator of Montana and has held a seat there since 2007. He also serves on the Senate Banking Committee, which is one of the key players involved in the ongoing debate over U.S. crypto regulation. During a Dec. 11 appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, Tester essentially argued that as crypto has no real value at all, the sector shouldn’t be regulated as that would give it legitimacy. “It's not been able …

It is understood that Terraform Labs’ controversial founder and CEO Do Kwon is currently located in the Southeast European nation of Serbia after leaving Singapore in September. According to a Dec. 11 report from Chosun Media, South Korean authorities followed a tip-off concerning Do Kwon's whereabouts suggesting he is now in Serbia and has been able to confirm it. "Recently, we obtained intelligence that CEO Kwon was in Serbia, and it was found to be true," an official told the outlet. The report also states that South Korea’s Ministry of Finance “is in the process of requesting cooperation from the …

To help out the recently duped investors of FTX Tokens (FTT), shareholder rights litigation firm — Schall Law Firm — has taken up the task of investigating the investors’ claims against FTX for violations of the securities laws. It is estimated that over one million people have lost their life savings owing to the financial fraud committed by FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. To help the investors legally recoup losses, the law firm plans to investigate FTX for issuing misleading statements or failing to disclose crucial information. In an official statement, Schall Law Firm highlighted how various media publications uncovered the …

Since taking over at the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), chairman Gary Gensler has repeatedly been referred to as the “bad cop” of the digital asset industry. To this point, over the past 18 months, Gensler has taken an extremely hard-nosed approach toward the crypto market, handing out numerous fines and enforcing stringent policies to make industry players comply with regulations. However, despite his aggressive crypto regulatory stance, Gensler, for the most part, has remained mum about several key issues that digital asset proponents have been talking about for a long time. For example, the SEC has still …

While many crypto fraudsters were able to slip through the cracks in the past, the same does not hold for FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). Running parallel to the ongoing scrutiny related to FTX frauds, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is reportedly investigating a potential fraud that involves SBF siphoning funds offshore just days before FTX filed for bankruptcy. According to a Bloomberg report, the federal investigation aims to examine SBF’s involvement in improperly transferring FTX funds to the Bahamas as the defunct crypto exchange filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11. The anonymous informant further revealed that DOJ …

United States lawmakers have been pushing for certain witnesses — including Sam Bankman-Fried — to appear before committee hearings scheduled in December. Who should the crypto space expect to see testifying on the events leading to the downfall of FTX? On Dec. 9, Bankman-Fried, or SBF, said — under threat of a potential subpoena — that he was willing to speak at a U.S. House hearing aimed at exploring FTX’s collapse. Leadership with both the House Financial Services Committee and Senate Banking Committee had suggested that they might subpoena the former FTX CEO, prompting SBF to say on Twitter he …

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has indicated that he’s willing to testify at a United States Senate hearing into the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Bankman-Fried controversially missed the deadline to respond to a Senate Banking Committee request to appear and testify during a hearing focused on FTX’s bankruptcy earlier this week. While the possibility of a congressional subpoena was on the table, the beleaguered former CEO has offered himself up in a series of Tweets published Dec. 9. 1) I still do not have access to much of my data -- professional or personal. So there is a limit …