Glenn Arcaro, former director and promoter of the notorious BitConnect Ponzi scheme, has pled guilty to fraud charges related to his role in the now-defunct crypto exchange and lending platform. He has been ordered to pay back $24 million to investors. In a parallel action in the long-running saga, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has charged BitConnect, its founder, Satish Kumbhani, former director Arcaro, and Future Money Ltd. for the scheme. The defendants are accused of running a fraudulent, unregistered securities offering that netted $2 billion. The latest developments come three years after BitConnect shut down its lending …

Crypto assets will not last long outside of a public policy framework because “finance is about trust,” warns Gary Gensler, the chair of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Speaking to The Financial Times, Gensler stressed the need for a regulatory framework for crypto platforms for their own survival. He explained that crypto assets should be under the same public policy imperatives to protect investors and fight illicit financial activities. He said that the global market capitalization for cryptocurrencies has already surpassed $2 trillion and, if crypto is “going to have any relevance five and 10 years from now, …

The $4 million NFT depicting the original Doge meme is set to be fractionalized into ERC-20 Tokens, and auctioned off in pieces. The owner of the Shibu Inu depicted in the beloved meme, Atsuko Sato sold the Doge NFT for 1696.9 Ether, or $4 million on June 12 to art-focused decentralized autonomous organisation, PleasrDAO. Starting from Sept.1 at 5pm UTC PleasrDAO will offer exposure to the Doge NFT via a fractionalization that will see the nonfungible token broken down into 16,969,696,969 ERC-20 tokens named “$DOG”. According to a blog post from PleasrDAO, 20% of the total $DOG supply will be …

Some financial experts believe that the price of cryptocurrencies is solely driven by investors' speculation, and in the past few years, detractors have suggested that fixed income instruments like Treasury bills have no relation to do with digital assets. This point of view is fairly accurate because at this time, most investors from the asset class are not allowed to invest in Bitcoin (BTC) and altcoins. Public pension funds, retirement plans, fixed income and most non-leverage equity and multimarket mutual funds can only invest in certain asset classes. These limits arise from the fund class regulation, the fund's own bylaws …

Ripple has filed a motion to compel the United States Securities and Exchange Commission to disclose its internal cryptocurrency trading policies as part of the ongoing legal battle with the securities regulator. James Filan, an attorney closely following the SEC's case against Ripple, shared a new motion document seeking to bring clarity to whether the SEC permitted its own employees to trade XRP, which, as per the regulator’s allegations, is an unregistered security. Filed on Friday on behalf of several defendants — including Ripple Labs, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and Ripple executive chairman Chris Larsen — the motion asks the …

Although the cryptocurrency sector may still be considered the “Wild West” by some governments and regulators, continued adoption and emerging use cases show that digital currencies are here to stay. Some even argue that blockchain-based networks and decentralized finance, or DeFi, platforms may soon replace traditional financial systems. Yet despite ongoing progress, the crypto industry is still young and, therefore, requires further development before it can be widely accepted. One area in particular that needs deeper addressing within the crypto space is regulation. Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic advisor at Allianz — a German multinational financial services company — stated in …

The entire cryptocurrency industry is waking up to a new reality. Politicians and regulators have decided to wade into the space, which had flown mainly under their radar until now. A House committee chair is launching a working group; the Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking new authorities to regulate digital assets as securities; and the Senate-passed infrastructure bill includes $28 billion in tax revenues from crypto transactions. This last handful of weeks has arguably seen more regulatory activity around digital currencies since the name Satoshi Nakamoto first entered the popular lexicon. Anyone whose business deals in this asset class …

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has reportedly signed a $125,000 deal with blockchain analytics firm AnChain.AI to help monitor and regulate the decentralized finance industry. According to a Friday report from Forbes, an AnChain.AI company spokesperson confirmed the agreement with the federal regulator, saying the SEC and blockchain firm had the option to sign up to five separate 1-year contracts for $125,000 each, or $625,000 total. The first contract reportedly began in May. “The SEC is very keen on understanding what is happening in the world of smart contract-based digital assets,” said AnChain.AI CEO and co-founder Victor Fang. “We …

The latest news has left the decentralized finance community in a collective fetal position. Responding to the threat of increased regulatory oversight, leading decentralized exchange Uniswap recently restricted the trading of certain tokens. Earlier in July, Dan M. Berkovitz, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said that DeFi derivatives platforms might contravene the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA): “Not only do I think that unlicensed DeFi markets for derivative instruments are a bad idea, but I also do not see how they are legal under the CEA.” Most worrisome of all is the initial version of the United States …

Less than two days after submitting separate applications to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), asset managers VanEck and ProShares have seemingly decided not to pursue exchange-traded funds (EFTs) with exposure to Ether. In individual Friday filings with the SEC, legal representatives of VanEck and ProShares both said the firms had elected not to proceed with registering their respective Ether-based exchange-traded funds. VanEck had submitted a filing to launch an “Ethereum Strategy ETF” with the SEC on Wednesday, while ProShares applied for an “Ether Strategy ETF” the same day. Both products had seemingly aimed to provide exposure to …

Two more Ether (ETH)-based exchange-traded funds have been filed this week, bringing the total to 23 crypto ETF filings so far in 2021. VanEck and ProShares are the latest firms to reveal plans for institutional products focused on Ethereum. According to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, VanEck is seeking to launch an “Ethereum Strategy ETF”, while ProShares is calling its proposed product the “Ether Strategy ETF”. Both ETFs aim to provide exposure to Ether by investing in ETH futures contracts in addition to pooled investment vehicles and other exchange-traded products that have ETH exposure. The …

Gary Gensler, chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, stated that decentralized finance (DeFi) is highly centralized in certain aspects and urged projects working in the sector to register with the SEC. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Gensler suggested that the decentralized notions implied by the term DeFi were “a bit of a misnomer,” adding: “These platforms facilitate something that might be decentralized in some aspects but highly centralized in other aspects.” While DeFi projects are designed to be autonomous platforms that operate without a centralized authority, Gensler asserted that many are developed and controlled …