Politics, Legal & Regulation

August 16, 2021 @ 4:21 pm By JD Alois  |  

US House of Representative Patrick McHenry and Representative Glenn Thompson have sent a letter to both the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) telling them to form a working group on digital assets. The letter arrives at a time when… Read More

August 16, 2021 @ 12:08 pm By JD Alois  |  

PeerIQ, a top online lending data and analytics operation, has been selected along with several other firms to submit proposals to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) aiming to boost the utilization of modern technology tools. PeerIQ is joined by Palantir Technologies, S&P Global Market… Read More

August 16, 2021 @ 11:48 am By JD Alois  |  

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged HempAmericana its CEO, and six others with allegations of a penny stock fraud scheme. The SEC also charged certain of the participants with operating as unregistered dealers, and has obtained emergency relief to halt ongoing conduct. HempAmericana… Read More

August 14, 2021 @ 4:22 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) recently revealed that eight teams have been chosen to take part in a “tech sprint” designed “to explore new technologies and techniques” to assist banking institutions with meeting the requirements of unbanked consumers. The FDIC’s technology lab, FDITECH, introduced… Read More

August 14, 2021 @ 4:10 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Sheila Warren, Deputy Head of the C4IR; Member of the Executive Committee, World Economic Forum,  and Sumedha Deshmukh Platform Curator, Blockchain and Digital Currency, World Economic Forum, recently published their views on why effective cryptocurrency regulations will take time to develop. As noted (on August… Read More

August 13, 2021 @ 3:25 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

TaxBit has raised $130 million in capital through a Series B round at a $1.33 billion valuation in order to “disrupt” legacy tax information reporting. Michell O’Conner, VP of Marketing at TaxBit, says her team is pleased to finalize the massive round that was led… Read More

August 12, 2021 @ 10:59 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Crypto is “changing,” and BitMEX is “changing with it” according to Alexander Höptner, the CEO at the Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange. In a blog post dated August 10, 2021, the team at BitMEX revealed that they’ve reached a “resolution” with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission… Read More

August 12, 2021 @ 10:30 am By JD Alois  |  

The enforcement drums are pounding at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) when it comes to digital assets. At the top of the list are trading platforms that may be skirting established securities laws, especially when the Commission believes they are enabling the buying and… Read More

August 11, 2021 @ 2:20 pm By Priyanka Pani  |  

The UK government plans to create a digital identity trust framework using modern technology to make verification faster and easier for its citizens. The government had first published the trust framework in February this year.  The UK government has created the framework by conducting extensive online surveys,… Read More

August 11, 2021 @ 11:07 am By JD Alois  |  

In a recent round of correspondences launched by Senator Elizabeth Warren, a noted crypto skeptic, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler responded with a request for additional authority to regulate digital asset exchanges. Gensler said that legislative priority should center on crypto trading, lending and DeFi platforms…. Read More

August 10, 2021 @ 10:15 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Juniper Research recently published a whitepaper titled, “Cash is No Longer King: How Contactless Payments are Becoming the Norm.” The paper from Juniper Research notes that bricks-and-mortar retailers are now “under pressure” to provide increasingly “frictionless” shopping experiences. Consumers have started expecting quick, secured, and… Read More

August 10, 2021 @ 10:13 pm By Tony Zerucha  |  

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this week announced an emergency action charging nine people, including a public company chairman, for their participation in long-running fraudulent schemes that collectively generated hundreds of millions of dollars from unlawful stock sales and caused significant harm to retail… Read More

August 10, 2021 @ 5:02 pm By JD Alois  |  

Earlier today the US Senate voted on a massive bill that, while labeled infrastructure, included a cornucopia of pet projects and unrelated policy goals. Squirreled away in the legislation was language designed to raise revenue by taxing crypto transactions as well as broadly defining the… Read More

August 10, 2021 @ 4:23 pm By JD Alois  |  

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), has announced a consent order against BitMEX and its affiliated entities. The order stems from a CFTC action filed on October 1, 2020, against BitMEX and its three individual founders, Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed. The CFTC’s… Read More

August 10, 2021 @ 12:03 pm By JD Alois  |  

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has issued a notice that the US District Court, Southern District of Texas, has issued a consent order in regards to the Global Trading Club (GTC) and affiliated individual Mayco Alexis Maldonado Garcia, and a separate consent order against Cesar Castaneda and… Read More

August 9, 2021 @ 10:40 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

The Pakistan Software Houses Association had recommended to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) that IT firms should be permitted to use 20% of their export earnings to pay for foreign consultants, digital service providers, vendors (among other requirements) in order to conduct operations and… Read More

August 9, 2021 @ 8:36 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Carole House, Director of Cybersecurity with the White House National Security Council, recently discussed online security issues at the FinCrime Virtual Week. Blockchain security firm CipherTrace notes in a recent update that headlines such as the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware attack indicate that cybercrime is “on… Read More

August 9, 2021 @ 12:23 pm By JD Alois  |  

A new amendment has been crafted by both sides regarding crypto and inclusion in the infrastructure legislation. As has been reported previously, the initial language in the legislation was deemed “unworkable” and hammered by the digital asset industry as “disastrous.” Soon a fix was in… Read More

August 9, 2021 @ 11:45 am By JD Alois  |  

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, long a supporter of Fintech innovation, has issued a statement in the wake of the enforcement action taken by the Commission against Poloniex, a crypto exchange. As was reported earlier today, Poloniex has settled the SEC’s allegations of operating an unlicensed… Read More

August 9, 2021 @ 11:26 am By Omar Faridi  |  

In April of last year, China had started testing out the the virtual yuan, becoming one of the first world governments to issue a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). CBDCs like the virtual renminbi are government-issued, blockchain or distributed ledger tech (DLT)-enabled versions of a… Read More