Ripple Labs General Counsel Stu Alderoty has hit back at a recent opinion piece by Security and Exchange Commission chairman Gary Gensler, arguing that the regulator's crypto market shakedowns aren’t protecting consumers. In an Aug. 28 opinion piece on the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) titled “The SEC Wants to Be America’s Crypto Cop,” Alderoty claimed the SEC is “pushing aside his follow regulators” instead of concentrating on providing regulatory clarity for crypto. He gave an example of the recent “shakedown” of BlockFi by the SEC, which led to the company ending “up on the auction block” and two other similar …

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse took to Twitter to deny recent explosive claims made by Crypto Leaks, an online publication focusing on corruption and fraud-related news in the crypto ecosystem. Crypto Leaks published a report on Friday containing a series of short videos from an unknown source. The report claimed that Ava Labs formed a secret pact with the law firm to use the American legal system “gangster style” to “attack and harm crypto organizations." The same report also alleged that Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse funded a law firm to target competitor firms. The report claimed Roche, who founded Roche Freedman, …

Ava Labs CEO Emin Gün Sirer has dismissed sensational allegations from CryptoLeaks that his company used litigation to “harm” competitors and fool regulators, labeling it as “conspiracy theory nonsense.” Sirer made the comments in an Aug. 28 Twitter post to his 280,500 followers, referring to an Aug. 26 article from CryptoLeaks alleging the company formed a “secret pact” with U.S. law firm Roche Freedman to use the American legal system “gangster style” to “attack and harm crypto organizations." How could anyone believe something so ridiculous as the conspiracy theory nonsense on Cryptoleaks? We would never engage in the unlawful, unethical …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has pushed back a decision on the latest application for a Bitcoin (BTC) spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) by global investment firm VanEck. The company has long been trying to get the green light for what will be the first BTC ETF in America, with its first application lodged with the SEC dating back to 2017 which was eventually denied. VanEck saw a second application ruled out in November 2021 by the SEC, reasoning that the firm had not met standards to protect investors as well as prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and …

Asian crypto exchange Zipmex has requested meetings with Thailand's Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and other regulators to discuss the firm’s “recovery plan.” In a statement on Aug. 25, Zipmex said it had submitted a letter requesting meetings with the securities regulator, which will also be attended by the firm’s potential investors. “We have requested meetings with Thailand’s Securities Exchange Commission and regulators in the country where we operate to introduce our investors to regulators and present our recovery plan to government agencies.” Though the company was tight-lipped on who the investors may be, Zipmex noted that it was in “advanced …

Are cryptocurrency games innocent fun? Or are they Ponzi schemes facing an imminent crackdown by regulators in the United States? Tokens related to cryptocurrency games — known colloquially as “GameFi” — were worth a cumulative total of nearly $10 billion as of mid-August, give or take a few billion. (The number may vary depending on whether you want to include partially finished projects, how you count the number of tokens that projects technically have in circulation, and so on.) In that sense, whether the games are legal is a $10 billion question that few investors have considered. And that’s an …

One user has filed a class-action lawsuit against crypto exchange Coinbase on behalf of account and wallet holders “who have had their accounts breached and incurred losses arising from the unauthorized transfer of assets.” In an Aug. 15 filing in U.S. district court for the Northern District of Georgia, plaintiff George Kattula requested a jury trial against Coinbase, claiming the crypto exchange did not employ practices aimed at keeping users’ accounts secure, and had “improperly and unreasonably” locked clients out of their accounts during periods of peak volatility in the crypto market. In addition, Kattula alleged that Coinbase should be …

Kathy Kraninger, former director of the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, said while many in crypto have complained about the lack of regulatory clarity in the country, the legal gray area has afforded the industry opportunities. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Kraninger said Congressional action on dividing the roles of different regulatory agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC — would be the “best outcome” in her view. However, she added it was unlikely any single department would have total control over the variety of investment products related to …

The saga of BitConnect, a major cryptocurrency scam scheme, is taking another twist as one of the BitConnect co-founders is now wanted by the Indian state police. Satish Kumbhani, an Indian national and the alleged founder of the crypto Ponzi scheme BitConnect, reportedly became subject to a new police investigation in India, The Indian Express reported on Wednesday. The Pune police, operating under the Indian state Maharashtra Police, launched a probe into Kumbhani after a Pune-based lawyer filed a complaint claiming that he lost about 220 Bitcoin (BTC), or $5.2 million, due to BitConnect. The complainant said his original investment …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, has filed a complaint related to a 2017 initial coin offering from a blockchain project originally developed by the Walt Disney Company. In a Tuesday notice, the SEC said it had charged Dragonchain, the Dragonchain Foundation, the Dragon Company, and their founder John Joseph Roets for raising $16.5 million in a presale and initial coin offering from 2017. According to the financial regulator, Roets, Dragonchain, and the Dragonchain Foundation allegedly conducted an unregistered offering of the blockchain’s DRGN tokens in an August 2017 presale and an October and November 2017 ICO, …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, has proposed requiring large advisers to certain hedge funds to report any exposure to digital assets. In a Wednesday notice, the SEC and CFTC proposed amending their confidential reporting form for certain investment advisers to private funds of at least $500 million. The Form PR would require qualifying hedge funds to not include exposure to cryptocurrencies when reporting “cash and cash equivalents,” but rather add them under a different category “to report digital asset strategies accurately.” The two U.S. financial regulators cited the …

The Coinbase drama, which started at the end of July, continues with new developments. Last week a former Coinbase Global product manager Ishan Wahi pleaded not guilty to two counts of wire fraud conspiracy and two counts of wire fraud in a Manhattan federal court. Wahi was arrested during his attempt to board a flight from the United States to India in May and accused of insider trading. While the Wahi’s figure is central to two separate court cases, another two lawsuits appeared last week against the San-Francisco-based crypto exchange. Legal firm Bragar Eagel & Squire revealed that it would …