Due to Celsius Network’s withdrawal suspension in mid-June, the very topic of crypto lending made its entryway to the acute issues list for the regulators. Last week, lawmakers and officials continued to raise the question of necessary action, with significant utterance belonging to one of the key European crypto skeptics, Christine Lagard. European Central Bank president got so impressed with the Celsius crisis that she coined the term "MiCa II," referring to the main regulatory package for crypto in the European Union. Lagarde believes the new MiCa should include separate crypto-asset staking and lending guidelines. It’s not necessary to be …

United States Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler riled up Crypto Twitter on Monday after affirming that Bitcoin (BTC) is a commodity. Questions were raised about its impact on Grayscales’ proposed Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) and why Ether (ETH) wasn’t mentioned. Speaking to Jim Cramer on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Monday, the SEC chair said that while many crypto-financial assets have the key attribute of a security, Bitcoin is the “only one” that he was comfortable publicly labeling as a commodity: “Some, like Bitcoin — and that’s the only one I’m going to say because I’m not going to …

Digital asset manager Grayscale reported overwhelming support in public comments for its application to launch a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. In a Monday letter to investors, Grayscale said that of the more than 11,400 letters the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, had received in regards to its proposed Bitcoin (BTC) investment vehicle, “99.96 percent of those comment letters were supportive of Grayscale’s case” as of June 9. According to Grayscale, roughly 33% of the letters questioned the lack of a spot BTC ETF in the U.S., given the SEC had already approved investment vehicles linked to Bitcoin …

United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Gary Gensler is in talks with Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) officials on a “memorandum of understanding” on the regulation of digital assets. Together, the agencies can assure market integrity, Gensler told The Financial Times in an interview published Thursday. “I’m talking about one rule book on the exchange that protects all trading regardless of the pair — [be it] a security token versus security token, security token versus commodity token, commodity token versus commodity token,” Gensler told the newspaper. Gensler’s desire to be collaborative comes as a variety of legislative initiatives …

Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson has told Congress it should make regulations for crypto but leave compliance up to the software developers. Hoskinson likened the ideal arrangement for crypto regulation to the way banking self-regulation works during a Thursday congressional hearing, telling legislators, “it’s not the SEC or the CFTC going out there doing KYC-AML, it’s banks:” “It’s a public-private partnership. What needs to be done is to establish those boundaries, then what we can do as innovators is write software to help make that happen.” The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) …

Disclosure was an important theme at a United States House of Representatives hearing on digital asset regulation Thursday. Although chair of the House Agriculture Committee Subcommittee on Commodity Exchanges, Energy and Credit Sean Maloney specified that it would focus on gaps in the oversight and regulation of derivatives and underlying spot markets, the discussion ranged widely. The Agriculture Committee oversees the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which regulates financial markets along with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Chainalysis co-founder and chief strategy officer Jonathan Levin said in his testimony that cryptocurrency’s transparency provides unique insights into the markets, including …

Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple Labs, has claimed the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, has inconsistently imposed regulations on crypto firms in the country. Speaking to Wired editor-in-chief at the Collision conference in Toronto on Thursday, Garlinghouse pointed to Ripple’s current legal battle with the SEC, in which the federal regulator has alleged the company’s executives conducted an “unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering” with Ripple (XRP) token sales. Garlinghouse referenced the SEC’s approval of Coinbase’s public offering in April 2021, despite the fact the crypto exchange listed XRP at the time. “The SEC now seems to …

United States Securities and Exchange (SEC) commissioner Hester Peirce said the newly released SEC Agency Rule List is full of “hot-button” topics implemented in an unreasonable hurry, while crypto was ignored. Commissioner Peirce, who is sometimes referred to as the Crypto Mom for her strong positive views on cryptocurrency, released a statement concerning the SEC Spring 2022 Regulatory Agenda and the SEC Agency Rule List. Though the SEC list had no entries that made explicit reference to crypto, Pierce noted that one of the proposed rules, Amendments to Exchange Act Rule 3b-16, “might regulate crypto protocols or platforms through an …

It was first reported before Christmas that Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis planned to introduce a comprehensive crypto regulation bill. The Republican Lummis was already known for her pro-crypto stance and announced right away that she was looking for a Democratic co-sponsor. New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who had not previously been known to have a strong position on cryptocurrency, was named as the co-sponsor in March. The highly awaited Responsible Financial Innovation Act (RFIA) was introduced in the United States Senate on June 7. The RFIA is 69 pages of text thick with legal and crypto jargon. There is an …

United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) commissioner Hester Peirce has spoken out against crypto company bailouts, arguing it’s actually better to “let these things play out,” to create a more sustainable industry. Peirce, the most pro-crypto commissioner for the U.S. SEC, told Forbes that the recent crash in crypto, though painful, is separating strong companies from the weak: “When things are a bit harder in the market, you discover who’s actually building something that might last for the long, longer term and what is going to pass away.” The commissioner made it clear that she did not support bailouts …

Last week, the Celsius Network wrote its name in the alarming recent history of the crypto market failures alongside Terra (originally LUNA, now called LUNC). The American platform has unstaked $247 million worth of Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) from the Aave (AAVE) protocol and sent it to crypto exchange FTX while putting the withdrawal option for users on a stop. Immediately after that, United States securities regulators from five states — Alabama, Kentucky, New Jersey, Texas and Washington — opened an investigation into Celsius. This isn’t the first time the platform is facing suspicions from law enforcement. In September 2021, the …

United States Senator Bill Hagerty has sent a letter, cosigned by four other Republican senators, to Securities and Exchange (SEC) Commission chair Gary Gensler urging the withdrawal of a staff accounting bulletin, referred to as SAB 121, issued by the agency March 31. According to the senators, the bulletin amounts to “regulation disguised as staff guidance” and does not adhere to the Administrative Procedure Act. SAB 121 provides guidance on accounting and disclosure for companies that safeguard clients’ crypto assets and allow them to perform transactions with them. The bulletin said those companies, which include platforms such as Coinbase and …