Retail investors in the U.S. will now be able to trade a SEC-qualified token offering for the first time. Following the launch of the Stacks 2.0 mainnet, OKCoin has announced that it has listed the Stacks token (STX.) Stacks, formerly known as Blockstack, shares a native connection with the Bitcoin network. As reported by Cointelegraph, the layer-one blockchain has an ambitious vision to bring smart contracts and decentralized finance to BTC — enabling developers to build cutting-edge applications and explore new use cases. America is not the only market where STX can be purchased and traded on OKCoin, as this …

President-elect Biden’s team recently unveiled additional folks it plans on nominating for various positions after the inauguration on Wednesday. One key pick is Gary Gensler as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, according to a statement from Biden’s transition team on Monday. On Jan. 12, Reuters reported on anonymous sourcing forecasting Gensler as Biden’s choice. Today’s statement from the Biden team confirms the President-elect’s expected choice. “Gary Gensler served as chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 2009 to 2014,” the statement said. Coming immediately after the financial crisis, Gensler's term at the CFTC saw …

On June 25, 2020, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission brought suit in the Northern District of California against NAC Foundation LLC, also known as the NationalAtenCoin Foundation, and Rowland Marcus Andrade, the company’s CEO, alleging that the company had violated the federal securities laws by selling an unregistered, pre-functional version of an “Anti-Money Laundering BitCoin” token, to be known as AML BitCoin. Unlike some of the other recent high-profile decisions applying the Howey Test, such as SEC vs. Telegram and SEC vs. Kik, the NAC lawsuit involved detailed allegations of fraud in connection with the sale of pre-functional …

The XRP (XRP) price remained relatively unmoved on Thursday, Jan. 14, even as the broader cryptocurrency market ignited a recovery that saw over $150 billion flood back into the global market cap. Earlier this week the United States Securities and Exchange Commission announced the impending departure of Marc P. Berger, the commission’s Acting Director of the Division of Enforcement. The outgoing director was in office for the commencement of the SEC's $1.3 billion lawsuit against Ripple Labs. Berger leaves his position at the end of the month after just five months in the post. He had previously led the New …

Institutional crypto-fund manager Grayscale Investments has begun the dissolution of its XRP Trust in response to the Security and Exchange Commission’s December 2020 lawsuit alleging the XRP token is a security under U.S. law. According to an announcement published Wednesday, Grayscale decided to dissolve the trust in response to the spate of XRP delistings from major crypto-asset exchanges after the SEC’s complaint was filed. Grayscale concluded: “It is likely to be increasingly difficult for U.S. investors, including the Trust, to convert XRP to U.S. dollars, and therefore continue the Trust’s operations.” All XRP held by the trust has already been …

As Ripple faces serious legal charges over its associated token XRP, many crypto platforms have decided to drop support for the coin until things are settled. However, GateHub, a United Kingdom-based cryptocurrency gateway service, has decided to continue listing XRP. According to a Jan. 12 announcement, GateHub will not delist XRP unless a decision from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission makes it necessary: “Please be advised that GateHub Ltd. will continue listing XRP until the SEC’s complaint against Ripple is adjudicated and a final decision entered that XRP is properly classified as a ‘security,’ or until we receive …

President-elect Biden has finally decided on his nominee to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. At least according to Reuters' anonymous sourcing in a Tuesday report, Gary Gensler will be Biden's nominee as SEC Chair. During the Obama administration, Gensler was the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in which capacity he was in charge of enforcing the many new provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act that followed the 2008 financial crisis. Gensler has spent most of the Trump years at MIT, teaching courses on digital assets and blockchain. If nominated, there is little doubt that a now-Democrat-controlled Senate would …

As digital assets made strides toward mainstream status in 2020, the guardians of the incumbent financial system have been working hard to minimize disruption caused by their integration. In the U.S., regulatory and law enforcement interventions throughout the year have left some projects out of business, empowered traditional players to take a closer look at crypto, and sent some unequivocal messages to cryptocurrency service providers globally. Naturally, the steady legitimization and expansion of the crypto space led regulators to get more involved than ever before. Below are the biggest cases of U.S. watchdog and law enforcement agencies’ involvement that have …

IMVU's new fiat-convertible VCOIN goes live on the social network. Per a Jan. 12 company announcement shared with Cointelegraph, VCOIN is available for users of IMVU, starting today. IMVU already hosts over 27 million transactions a month using its non-blockchain-backed credits. VCOIN aims to give users involved in those transactions the opportunity to convert their earnings into value that they can use off the platform, both in peer-to-peer transactions and in conversion to fiat, integrating the game's virtual economy into the rest of the economy more tangibly. Regarding the hoped-for boost to the virtual world's economy, IMVU's chief strategy and …

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has revealed the firm unsuccessfully attempted to settle its securities violation lawsuit with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and slammed the “regulatory chaos” around cryptocurrencies. I’m not going to litigate the SEC’s unproven allegations on Twitter, and as you can imagine, there are new considerations to what can / should be said publicly after the litigation process starts. However, I would like to address 5 key questions I’ve seen. 1/10 — Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) January 7, 2021 In a Twitter thread addressing what he described as “5 key questions,” the CEO strongly denied the …

When the Securities and Exchange Commission gave its blessing to social media platform IMVU to launch VCOIN, it was a major leap forward for acceptable scope of crypto applications. The implications for what sorts of projects the SEC considers a security are, in and of themselves, huge. But part of the appeal of VCOIN to the SEC is that, with its stable price and clear use case, IMVU has managed to demonstrate to the commission that the token is a means of making the platform a more lifelike digital world that is more fun to hang out in. For those …

Popular wallet provider and crypto trading platform Blockchain.com has announced it will be delisting XRP and suspending its trading next week, following in the steps of Coinbase, Binance.US, OKCoin and others. Although as of press time on Wednesday Blockchain.com's information on supported crypto assets continues to feature XRP, a blog post published on Monday informed users that: "Blockchain.com will halt XRP trading beginning Thursday, January 14th at 11:59pm GMT. For all customers who have XRP balances, you will continue to have access to your XRP to send after we halt trading, but we will no longer support receiving more XRP …