***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…
On Monday, November 16, 2020, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton announced his intention to depart from the agency by the end of 2020. News of Clayton’s decision comes as no real surprise, as it is typical for the SEC Chair to hand the reigns to a successor around the time of…
Please note, this is a summary to the article originally published in Fintech Futures. PayPal, which has 346 million customers and accounts for nearly 14% of online payments nationally, has announced that its U.S. customers will be able to buy, sell and hold a selection of cryptocurrencies via its digital…
Please note, the below is a summary based off the article originally published in Forbes. Diginex (EQOS), the Singapore-based digital assets group, went public with a Nasdaq listing last week. It is the first digital assets group with a crypto exchange to publicly launch in the U.S., selecting Nasdaq as…
On October 8, 2020, the Attorney General’s Cyber Digital Task Force announced the release of a publication entitled Cryptocurrency: An Enforcement Framework (the “Enforcement Framework”). The Enforcement Framework describes the DOJ’s three areas of focus for illicit activity involving cryptocurrency: (1) financial transactions associated with the commission of crimes; (2)…
In 2020, the price of gold has jumped over 30 percent from $1,517 per ounce on January 3, 2020 to over $2,000 per ounce on August 6, 2020. The spike in the price of gold isn’t yet at the level reached in the 2017 Bitcoin boom when the price of…
On June 24, 2020, New York’s Department of Financial Services (“DFS”) announced a series of steps it is taking to promote development and opportunities in the virtual currency space. These actions would build upon New York’s “BitLicense,” a virtual currency licensing regime implemented in 2015 that establishes minimum standards for…
On July 22, 2020, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued an interpretive letter confirming that national banks and federal savings associations (banks) may provide cryptocurrency custody services to customers. The conclusion that banks may provide such services is not surprising, because banks have long provided safekeeping…
U.S. broker-dealer activity involving digital assets could implicate various FINRA rules in addition to federal and state securities laws and SEC rules. As most readers likely know by now, whether this activity is of interest to or subject to the jurisdiction of U.S. securities regulators (both federal and state) largely…
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…