On Feb. 13, a federal judge put the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission cases against former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried on hold. You’ll be forgiven if you missed this story — headlines and social media were dominated by the breaking news that the SEC was suing crypto firm Paxos for minting Binance’s stablecoin, Binance USD (BUSD). But we’re not here to debate whether stablecoins are securities. The Howey test has been discussed to death, and while it’s true that few people expect to profit from a token pegged to a fiat currency, the issue is …

California Representative Maxine Waters, ranking member of the United States House Financial Services Committee, has called for coordination and cooperation between government agencies and lawmakers to address crypto regulation. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Representative Waters suggested that recent enforcement actions on the crypto space from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) may have been to present the image of “doing something substantive and meaningful” following the collapse of major exchanges including FTX. According to Waters, the market crash and related bankruptcies of major firms gave U.S. lawmakers an opportunity of “getting accountability” in the …

The United States Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, said it had started an investigation of crypto lending firm Voyager Digital parallel to the company’s bankruptcy proceedings. In a Feb. 22 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, the FTC said it was investigating Voyager and its employees “for their deceptive and unfair marketing of cryptocurrency to the public”. The announcement followed Bankruptcy Judge Michael Wiles initially approving of a plan in which Voyager debtors would sell the firm’s assets to Binance.US for more than $1 billion. According to the FTC filing — an objection to …

The United States Congress needs to take control of crypto legislation to make it a more “open process” where the entire marketplace is looked over “comprehensively,” suggests the chief of the prominent U.S. crypto industry body. In a Feb. 22 Bloomberg interview, Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith said the industry needs U.S. lawmakers to lead crypto legislation despite it making the process “very slow” and regulators “stepping in” in the interim. Smith noted that despite regulators “moving very quickly,” progress on legislation is happening “behind closed doors,” suggesting it's vital for more industry involvement in an “open process” which would …

The staking services offered by cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase are “fundamentally different” to what was offered by its peer exchange Kraken — which recently came under fire from the United States securities regulator — according to Coinbase's head lawyer. Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, made the comments in his response to a shareholder question regarding its staking services during a Q&A session on the exchange’s fourth-quarter results, noting: “The staking products that we offer on Coinbase are fundamentally different from the yield products that were described in the reinforcement action against Kraken. The differences matter.” The first point of difference …

United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has beaten revenue expectations for the fourth quarter of 2022 but continued to see its transaction volume decline. Net revenue for the exchange came in at $605 million for the quarter, beating the $589 million revenue reportedly estimated by Wall Street analysts Transaction volumes decreased 12% compared to the prior quarter, however, Coinbase pointed to a 34% increase in subscription and service revenues as the reason for its 5% total revenue growth for the quarter. Our Q4 and FY'22 financial results are in. Our letter to shareholders can be found on the Investor Relations website …

Shark Tank investor and venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary has urged crypto exchanges to “get on board with regulation” if they want to “stay out of the way” of Gary Gensler and the United States Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). In a Feb. 20 interview with TraderTV Live, O’Leary said that U.S. lawmakers are “fatigued” over crypto collapses and that they’re only going to get more ruthless if companies continue to not comply: “You got to get on board with regulation, you got to stay out of the way of Gensler at the SEC and other regulators. Those hombres [men] in Washington …

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (San Francisco Fed) is on the lookout for a software engineer who can help develop and implement example systems related to a central bank digital currency (CBDC). On Feb. 18, SF Fed posted a job opening for a “senior application developer - digital currency.” The candidate is expected to aid the Federal Reserve in designing and implementing systems critical to CBDC research. Revealing its intention, SF Fed’s post read: “Given the dollar’s important role, Federal Reserve System seeks to further understand the cost and benefits of the potential technologies for central bank digital …

Representatives for Voyager's Unsecured Creditors have requested that former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, provide documents and appear in court remotely next week for a deposition. A court filing on Feb. 18 in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, stated that Bankman-Fried has been served a “Subpoena to Testify at a Deposition in a Bankruptcy Case.” It was served by the Official Committee for the Unsecured Creditors of Voyager Digital Holdings, a bankrupt crypto lending exchange, who stated that he must appear for the “remote deposition” on Feb. 23. It also stated that Bankman-Fried produce …

Non-custodial crypto platform ShapeShift refuted United States Senator Elizabeth Warren’s claims of "illicit financing,” suggesting that she used the platform as a scapegoat to “push” her latest crypto bill, according to a recent statement. ShapeShift stated in a tweet on Feb. 19 that Warren made “mistakes” in her “analysis” of the platform, which were made at a recent senate banking committee hearing entitled “Crypto Crash: Why Financial System Safeguards are Needed for Digital Assets,” on Feb. 14. On Valentine's Day, @SenWarren attempted to use ShapeShift as an example to push her latest crypto bill. Unfortunately, there were mistakes in the …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, has announced a $1.4-million settlement with former NBA player Paul Pierce for allegedly promoting a token project on social media. In a Feb. 17 announcement, the SEC said Pierce touted EthereumMax (EMAX) tokens through social media channels without disclosing he had received payment for the promotion and made “false and misleading statements” regarding the project. According to the SEC, promoters paid the former NBA star $244,000 worth of EMAX in addition to him posting messages allegedly showing misleading information about profits on Twitter. The financial regulator has previously targeted celebrities promoting …

In a year of crypto upheavals, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s settlement with crypto exchange Kraken, announced on Feb. 9, set off yet another tremor. Agency chief Gary Gensler took to mainstream media last week to explain the agency’s action, which seemed to be an attack on crypto staking — part of the validation mechanism used by a number of blockchain platforms, including Ethereum, the world’s second-largest network. The immediate issue, in the agency’s view, was that Kraken had been selling unregistered investment products. Indeed, it was advertising big returns on staking crypto — up to 21%, Gensler …