This is the second in a three-part series based on Gary Gensler's extensive prior public statements on crypto. Here are parts 1 and 3. Gary Gensler will likely become chairman for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, in the coming days. A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, Gensler knows his way around crypto and blockchain, evident in his leadership of a class on the subject at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. While teaching the Fall 2018 semester, Gensler gave a wealth of insight into crypto regulation. In 2018, U.S. regulators were very much struggling …

Still facing a courtroom assault in the U.S. for allegedly facilitating money laundering, BitMex is trying to show regulators that it's trying. On Jan. 12, the legally besieged crypto exchange released a blog post advertising further work with blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. BitMex said its aim was "to identify, investigate, and stop illicit transactions." Chainalysis is known as a go-to solution for government entities looking to track crypto transactions. The firm has been instrumental to the Department of Justice's seizures of cryptocurrency, including over $1 billion in Bitcoin and its offshoots from an unnamed Silk Road hacker, as well as …

Equos, a Singapore-based digital currency exchange operated by Diginex, has announced the launch of a new Bitcoin (BTC) futures product without any settlement dates, marking a substantial leap in the BTC derivatives market. The firm introduced the BTC Perpetual Futures Contract on Thursday, a product it says is “well suited to the current trading environment.” The perpetual contract is geared toward professional traders with various risk profiles, with prices and liquidity provided by independent market makers. The exchange claims that its new BTC contract is backstopped by its liquidity reserves, which are partially funded through fees and trading revenue. Unlike …

BitMEX has announced the completion of its user verification program, becoming one of the largest crypto trading platforms with a fully certified customer base. As part of the process to verify its entire use base, BitMEX says open positions held by unverified accounts have been closed. Back in Aug. 2020, the platform revealed plans to undertake a comprehensive user identity verification exercise. The move came amid increasing regulatory scrutiny over the platform's notoriously lax Know Your Customer, or KYC, policies. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission charged BitMEX for illegally operating a derivatives trading …

Many overseas cryptocurrency exchanges would be happy to have U.S. traders as clients, but these days, American residents might as well have a sign around their necks reading “Danger: high voltage!” That’s been the case since Oct. 1, at least, when the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a complaint against Seychelles-registered BitMEX for soliciting U.S. residents and thus violating the Commodity Exchange Act. According to the complaint: “BitMEX has never been registered with the CFTC in any capacity and has not complied with the laws and regulations.” This poses a serious problem for the U.S. regulators that try …

A decentralized anonymous margin trading exchange says it doesn’t require Know Your Customer checks — meaning users can begin trading as soon as they’ve generated a wallet. DMEX says it is able to operate without KYC because of how it runs on a smart contract, and positions itself as a compelling alternative to BitMEX. Most decentralized exchanges use synchronous trade executions, meaning that users have to wait for their last trade to be registered on the blockchain before they can perform a new one. DMEX addresses this by using a state-of-the-art matching engine that monitors account balances while the confirmation …

100x — the holding group for Bitmex’s parent company — has announced the appointment of a permanent new CEO in the wake of charges filed in October against the exchange’s co-founders, including former CEO of both 100x and Bitmex, Arthur Hayes. On Dec. 1, 100x announced that the former chief executive officer of German stock exchange Borse Stuttgart GmbH, Alexander Hoptner, will take over as CEO in January 2021. Hoptner will also join 100x’s board of directors and report directly to the group’s chairman, David Wong. 100x’s new CEO stated: “I am proud to join 100x Group because I share …

There was a time when BitMEX derivatives exchange reigned sovereign over other exchanges, and the company effectively held a 50% market share until July 2019. For this reason, traders kept a close eye on every indicator connected to BitMEX, including its funding rate, open interest, and basis. Open interest measures the total number of contracts held by market participants. As the figure rises higher, so does the potential size of liquidations. On Aug. 2, a $1,400 crash happened as $1 billion in futures contracts were forcefully closed due to insufficient margins. Although there is no magic number, traders tend to …

Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao, or CZ, says he needs to do more to block “intelligent” US traders from illegally accessing his global exchange. In an interview with Bloomberg, CZ said his exchange needs to be “smarter about the way we block” US traders from gaining access to the platform. He said: “Basically, we do continually try to improve our blocking. There are sometimes a few guys who want to circumvent our blocking and still use the platform and we have to come up with a smarter way to protect that and when we do, we block them.” Binance, …

BitMEX, one of the world’s biggest Bitcoin (BTC) trading platforms, continues to strengthen its Anti-Money Laundering measures in the aftermath of its criminal charges in the United States. According to a Nov. 12 blog post, BitMEX has partnered with software and compliance firm Eventus Systems to improve its trade surveillance and AML transaction capabilities. Per the announcement, Eventus Validus‘ technology will be integrated into BitMEX’s existing trade surveillance and AML processes in order to provide a “safe and secure trading environment” for its users. “We will be able to more efficiently screen out bad actors and increase proactive monitoring for …

The mood of fear, uncertainty and doubt, otherwise known as FUD, that has gripped some of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges since October heightened last week — and it had nothing to do with the United States presidential election. “Weird Binance fud Friday and weird huobi arrest fud today,” tweeted MyCrypto CEO Taylor Monahan, referring to an Oct. 29 Forbes report that Binance had set up its U.S. unit, Binance.US, as a regulatory decoy and referencing separate rumors that Chinese authorities had detained a senior executive at Huobi. FUD, which has long dogged the cryptoverse, is commonly defined as misinformation intentionally …

The United States Attorney General’s Cyber-Digital Task Force recently unveiled the result of its months-long effort to evaluate emerging cryptocurrency-related threats and articulate law enforcement strategies for countering them. The resulting guidance leaves the reader with an impression that its authors have a sound understanding of how the focal asset class works as well as a certain fixation on the ways it can be misused, as some observers contend. In the highly charged atmosphere of the final weeks before the presidential election, with high-profile enforcement actions against the people behind crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX and the U.S. government’s sweeping anti-monopoly …