On Jan. 7, Anatoly Legkodymov, founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato, was arrested in Miami. The following day, the U.S. DOJ unsealed a complaint in federal court charging him with “conducting a money transmitting business that transported and transmitted illicit funds.” According to the DOJ, Bitzlato failed to meet U.S….
Goodwin partner Grant Fondo was recently interviewed on CoinDesk TV in regards to the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act that was introduced on Wednesday, August 3, 2022. The proposed legislation suggests that the CFTC should control crypto spot markets, specifically bitcoin and ether, which the bill classifies as commodities. To…
On July 21, 2022, the SEC charged three individuals with insider trading of digital assets via a scheme to trade ahead of multiple announcements regarding crypto assets being made available on a United States-based digital asset exchange at which one individual was a former product manager. In the complaint, the SEC identifies…
In a recent BlockTribune article, Goodwin’s Grant Fondo, David Gardy Ermann, Yoona Lee, Frank DelPesce, and Ahmed Abdelhamid discuss the recent “NFT Indictment” by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the FBI in addition to providing practical advice for trading digital assets. Read…
Digital Currency Perspectives authors Grant Fondo and Robert Tiefenbrun recently posted an alert regarding the SEC announcement that it settled charges against NVIDIA Corporation. The SEC has alleged that the company’s disclosures regarding the impacts of increased use of its gaming products by cryptocurrency miners were inadequate and misleading. Read…
On February 4, 2022, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) jumped into the regulatory discussion about non-fungible tokens (“NFTs”)—more with a whisper than a bang—in a report on its Study of the Facilitation of Money Laundering and Terror Finance Through the Trade in Works of Art. The report…
The blockchain and digital asset landscape continued to evolve in 2020. DeFi grew exponentially, venture funds are highly active, state and international jurisdictions are vying for crypto business, a crypto lawyer is head of the OCC, and Bitcoin has almost become mainstream. With the SEC, CFTC, FinCEN, DOJ, and the…
The SEC, in one of the Commission’s final acts under the leadership of Chair Jay Clayton, approved enforcement action aimed at Ripple Labs, Inc. (“Ripple”) and two of its executives, Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen. The SEC filed its complaint on December 22, 2020 in the Southern District of New…
***This article was originally published in CoinDesk and can be found here – https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/11/24/bitmex-founders-charges-highlight-risks-for-defi In October, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed enforcement actions against the entities and individuals that own and operate the Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange (BitMEX), a trading platform for cryptocurrency…
In a recent decision in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Telegram Group Inc. and TON Issuer Inc., the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York granted a motion for a preliminary injunction by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), thereby preventing the distribution to purchasers of…