The biggest regulatory story of the week, if not the year, has been the United States Security and Exchange Commission’s lack of opposition to the launch of the first-ever Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds, which took eight long years to materialize. While the first ETFs are tracking CME-traded Bitcoin futures rather than the asset’s spot price, the crypto space is already anticipating a pure-Bitcoin ETF as a logical next step. This bar might prove to be immensely difficult to clear, however, as SEC Chair Gary Gensler seems far less convinced of the stringency of investor protections that such products offer. Below …

On Oct. 6, the United States Department of Justice, or DOJ, announced the creation of a specialized unit, the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, or NCET, tasked with prosecuting criminal misuses of digital assets and crypto infrastructure, as well as tracing and recovering the ill-gotten cryptocurrency. The move continues the U.S. authorities’ push to disrupt the corners of the crypto ecosystem that are thought to facilitate illicit activity, such as ransomware attacks. What does the government’s crypto enforcement ramp-up hold for the larger digital asset space? Pooling crypto expertise The new unit will operate according to the principles articulated almost exactly …

On Oct. 15, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, handed sister crypto companies Tether and Bitfinex fines totaling $41 million and $1.5 million, respectively, citing violations of the Commodity Exchange Act, or CEA, and of a prior CFTC order. The regulator has found that Tether, the firm behind an eponymous stablecoin, has only held sufficient fiat reserves to back the dollar-pegged asset for 27.6% of time during the 26-month period under review between 2016 and 2018. The agency also stated that Tether violated the law by holding part of the reserves in non-fiat financial instruments, as well as by …

On Thursday, cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase published its Digital Asset Policy Proposal, a document offering both a justification and conceptual framework for the comprehensive regulation of digital assets in the United States. Coinbase presented the proposal as a product of dozens of meetings with industry participants, policymakers, crypto innovators and academics that the company’s representatives had held in the last several weeks. The firm’s intention is for the proposal to “animate an open and constructive discussion regarding the role of digital assets in our shared economic future” and offer good-faith suggestions on what a sensible approach to crypto regulation might …

Bitcoin (BTC) turned out to be a far more attractive prize than airline miles or other cashback rewards, new data from BlockFi suggests. It’s been three months since the New York-based crypto loans startup launched its Visa-backed Bitcoin rewards credit cards, BlockFi Rewards Visa Signature Credit Card, to customers. The card offers rewards in Bitcoin instead of using a more traditional points system. According to the company, if the average Bitcoin rewards card owner continues the shopping habit seen in these first three months, they'll be on track to spend more than $30,000 per year on average. This is almost …

There is nothing surprising about Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican known to be among the staunchest crypto supporters in the U.S. legislature, revealing a sizable Bitcoin (BTC) purchase that she had made earlier in the summer. It is still oddly satisfying to observe the alignment between a politician’s long-declared stance on an issue and corresponding monetary behavior (Lummis had been hodling BTC since 2013). Such consistency will be a norm in blockchain-based governance systems where individuals’ interests are aligned with those of the entire community and where all information that could be of remote public interest is transparent. Below …

This week, United States lawmakers and regulators have stolen much of the spotlight once more. The cryptocurrency-related provisions of the infrastructure bill, a tiny grain of sand in the grand scheme of the omnibus legislation, had all laser eyes glued to the fateful House of Representatives vote — which never happened. There is a sense, however, that the bill will become law sooner rather than later. We have also learned from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testifying to Congress that the Fed sees no use in a China-style blanket ban on cryptocurrency, eyeing tighter regulation of stablecoins instead. The latter …

Chinese regulatory authorities gave yet another shock to the cryptoverse by imposing a ban on all cryptocurrency transactions on Sept. 24. This measure came just as the market was beginning to recover from the government's June prohibition on cryptocurrency mining activities. The fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) that resulted from the ban caused Bitcoin (BTC) to crash nearly 9% within five hours, from exchanging hands in the $45,000 range to bottoming out at $41,142. Soon after, Alibaba announced that it would be banning any sale of cryptocurrency rigs and related accessories starting Oct. 8. However, the flagship cryptocurrency has since …

Later today, the United States House of Representatives is expected to vote on the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, a bill authorizing sweeping investments in domains such as passenger rail, bridge repair, clean and wastewater facilities, clean energy transmission, and universal access to high-speed internet. Also tucked into the massive bill are several provisions that would directly affect millions of crypto users if enacted, particularly the expanded tax reporting requirements for entities handling cryptocurrency transactions. Neither the bill becoming law nor even the Sept. 30 House vote on the bill is warranted. The legislation is working through …

In the wake of yet another iteration of China’s enduring crackdown on cryptocurrency, a particularly influential narrative on Crypto Twitter suggests that by banning Bitcoin (BTC), China has definitively put itself on the dark side of the struggle, while the collective West must now resolutely throw its weight on the opposite side by embracing crypto. Granted, this framework for thinking about the relationship between political power and decentralized finance is appealing for crypto allies. Yet the news coming out of the United States gives few reasons to believe that policymakers there see the situation this way. It appears that U.S. …

On September 17, a group of officials led by U.S. attorney Tracy Wilkinson have filed a civil complaint in the United States District Court for the Central District of California claiming that they have identified four digital wallets holding more than 9.8 million Tether (USDT) that was involved in wire fraud, computer fraud and money laundering. According to court documents, the legitimate owner of the funds is a California resident who in April 2021 got swindled out of more than 200 Bitcoin (BTC) by someone impersonating a Coinbase employee. Customer support goes awry As described in the claim, the unidentified …

Last week, some former users of the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange Cryptsy received a notice informing them of a new turn in the ongoing class settlement process. Authorized by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the document states that those who were defrauded in the 2016 collapse of the digital finance platform may be entitled to receive money from additional recovery. Cryptsy was a crypto exchange that went bust in January 2016 following months of user-reported issues with withdrawing funds from the platform. The court later found that Cryptsy founder Paul Vernon had stolen millions of …