I got a call from someone claiming to represent Coinbase, wanting to help me secure my account.
Thousands of crypto folks descended upon Canada to talk shop.
While the Senate failed to advance its stablecoin bill this week, it's not dead yet.
Seth Wilks and Raj Mukherjee, two IRS digital asset directors, are leaving the agency just over a year after joining it.
Canada's leading Prime Minister candidates aren't campaigning on crypto policies, but both have discussed the issue in the past.
Legal experts say it may not significantly alter the types of cases the DOJ brings.
Have you been sued or investigated by the SEC in a case that's now dropped? Please reach out.
The Treasury Department may not have had any choice but to remove its designation of the crypto mixer.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has closed a number of cases over the past few weeks.
The group's 2024 report once again highlighted FSOC's longstanding concerns about stablecoins.
Donald Trump and the Republican Party at large had a strong 2024 election, winning the presidency, Senate and House. This almost certainly guarantees crypto legislation will advance and become law sometime in the next two years. It also heralds a potentially softer approach from regulators toward the sector.
It is Election Day in the U.S. At some point in the coming hours, days and weeks, we'll know which major party wins control of the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House. Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump might get most of the headlines, but which political party controls Congress probably means a lot in terms of how cryptocurrencies will be treated in the nation, especially in the short term.
What role do privacy tools play in crypto, and how does this discussion develop? Those were some of the questions at a panel I moderated last week at the DC Privacy Summit.
Last week, CoinDesk's Sam Kessler reported that developers and IT workers employed by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea – i.e. North Korea – had managed to get themselves hired by a number of crypto projects, giving them two different ways of raising funds for the national regime.
Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison will learn her fate in a few hours. She may spend the next several months or years behind bars, but her attorneys, the Department of Justice and the Probation Office all seem to think she should remain a free woman after the amount of cooperation she provided.
The former president of the United States is launching a crypto yield product, even as he appeals to the crypto industry in his current bid for office. Donald Trump will be the "chief crypto advocate" for World Liberty Financial, a venture that has offered scant hints so far about what it will actually do.
Earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told the audience at a "Crypto4Harris" virtual event that he hoped to shepherd crypto legislation through Congress and have President Joe Biden sign the bill into law by the end of 2024. It was a bold promise, one that on first blush seems like a hard pledge to fulfill.
In 2020, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network proposed imposing know-your-customer requirements on unhosted wallets, drawing immense backlash from the crypto industry. This week, the Treasury Department formally withdrew the proposal.
Last week, a federal judge convened a hearing for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's case against Binance after publishing her ruling on Binance's motion to dismiss the SEC lawsuit.
A federal judge overseeing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's case against Binance ruled that most of the case can proceed, but dismissed charges tied to the sale of BUSD and secondary sales of BNB.
Last October, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) – the U.S. Treasury Department's money laundering watchdog – announced a proposal to label crypto mixers as a "primary money laundering" concern, a move that alarmed a broad swath of the crypto industry. Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson addressed this move and more at CoinDesk's Consensus 2024 last month in Austin, Texas on stage. The following transcript has been lightly edited (and the bulk of my questions have been slimmed down to their gist).
This week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission might approve spot ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs), the House of Representatives may vote in favor of a crypto market structure bill, the company behind a decentralized exchange is arguing with the SEC, and that's all just in the U.S. All of these topics will come up at Consensus 2024 next week.
The U.S. is holding its presidential election this fall. More than half a dozen other countries and bodies are likewise holding – or have held – elections this year. Some candidates and lawmakers have already addressed crypto, whether appealing to the industry or just commenting on the technology. The extent to which there is such a thing as a "crypto voter" remains unclear, but it is undeniable that there is a wave of attention directed at this industry.
Last month, Ethereum incubator ConsenSys sued the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an injunction asking a federal court to block the regulator from investigating its MetaMask offering or from declaring Ether (ETH) a security. It's the latest company to follow a growing trend of preemptive litigation against the SEC.
There was a lot of news last week, but maybe the biggest news came Wednesday when the U.S. Department of Justice arrested two co-founders of Samourai Wallet, a bitcoin wallet that offered mixing services. The arrest ramps up the federal government's efforts to tamp down on what it sees as money laundering enabled by privacy tools, and sets up a continuation of that broader conversation on where the right to transact in privacy fits within national security interests.
As expected, Sam Bankman-Fried's legal team filed a notice of his intent to appeal his conviction on fraud and conspiracy charges. So far all we have is just the notice – the actual brief won't come for some time yet.
Last summer, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued crypto exchanges Coinbase and Binance, alleging they listed and traded unregistered securities in the form of various cryptocurrencies. This week, the regulator's legal teams faced the exchanges in court as the companies argued the SEC did not make the case that those cryptos are securities.
On Monday, a New Hampshire state representative asked a mostly-filled room at an industry campaign event to raise their hands if they were visiting from another state. More than half the people in the room raised their hands. These visitors had come to hear from industry representatives, state lawmakers and – perhaps most importantly – three presidential candidates talk about the upcoming election.
CoinDesk published its annual Most Influential list (it's not a ranking, except for the top 10 being maybe more influential than the other 40). I wrote a few pieces (I had nothing to do with the art and didn't know about it when I wrote the pieces), as did my CoinDesk reg team colleagues, but I wanted to take a minute to recognize other influential figures who we may see pop up again. This is not meant to be a comprehensive or objective list; just a recognition of some of the folks whose work I've paid attention to this year.