By Dan Ikenson. (Forbes). May 2, 2024 Innovation is essential to economic growth and higher living standards. Better tools and techniques that make us more productive are requirements of wealth creation. Still, innovation attracts its fair share of skeptics whose fears about where new technologies may lead are ripe for exploitation. Helming the regulatory agencies in Washington, today, are many who seem to prey on fears about the nefarious misuse of technology or how innovation will send our jobs and way of life into obsolescence. Yet, with every new wave of technological uptake, the U.S. econ ..read more

By Dave McCormick. (Washington Examiner). 3/26/24. Across my career at the intersection of national security and our economy, I have witnessed firsthand several game-changing technological revolutions. From GPS to the internet and from smartphones to artificial intelligence, our nation’s unmatched capacity to innovate has created unprecedented benefits for the economy and security. Another wave is upon us: Blockchain and crypto offer America the chance to lead another generation of critical innovation, but policymakers must do their part, or this opportunity will slip ..read more

By Leo Schwartz. (Fortune Crypto). 3/18/24. On Monday, a federal judge took the unprecedented step of imposing sanctions on the Securities and Exchange Commission related to a lawsuit the agency brought against the Utah-based crypto company DEBT Box in July. The case drew widespread attention after the defendants accused the SEC of misrepresenting key facts when the agency obtained a temporary restraining order to freeze assets on the crypto platform. After U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby ordered the SEC to explain its actions, lawyers for the agency admitted th ..read more

By Kristi Warner The government’s approach to remedies and bitcoin mining are similar examples of agencies utilizing tools at their disposal to attack the crypto industry.  Remedies In July 2023, the SEC lost in the Ripple case on the main legal theories – Judge Torres ruled that secondary market sales were not sales of unregistered securities and XRP itself is not a security.  Individual XRP holders got their resolution. Now the case is really at a point where institutional sales and remedies are the focus. The SEC utilizes remedies and reliefs in many cases, and the type of remedie ..read more

By Sabrina Willmer and Anna Edgerton. (Bloomberg). February 23, 2024. Binance Holdings Ltd. will pay $4.3 billion after a judge approved a plea deal that levies one of the largest criminal penalties in US history against the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange. “This really is a case where the ethics of the company were compromised by greed,” US District Judge Richard Jones said at a sentencing hearing in Seattle on Friday. Late last year, Binance and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty to anti-money laundering and sanctions charges to resolve a long-running investig ..read more

By Rep. Todd Tiahrt. (RealClear Policy). February 21, 2024. Economic uncertainty is one of the top issues facing the country today. Many Americans have been forced to rethink their spending habits while concerns about job stability and fluctuating market conditions are leading families to focus more on savings and debt reduction as they prepare for potential financial challenges ahead.   To guide the United States through this tumultuous period, it is crucial to have trustworthy and reliable regulators who can stabilize markets during a crisis and who will collaborate with American busine ..read more

By Kristi Warner Since CryptoLaw launched in 2021, we have accomplished so much as a community. John started CryptoLaw as a reaction to “gross government overreach” – his goal was to build a trusted platform that people could turn to for news, updates, and analysis on legal and policy issues related to digital assets and the cryptocurrency industry. Through the years, and all the cases, we have stayed true to that mission – we have been an advocate for digital assets, but more importantly we have been an advocate for the truth.  Our plan for 2024 is to continue that mission. We are commit ..read more

By John E. Deaton. It didn’t just take a village. It took an army of activists, lawyers and everyday citizens to demand, insist and even sue the Securities and Exchange Commission to be transparent. From the moment William Hinman got on that stage in San Francisco on June 14, 2018, to declare that Ethereum’s native token, Ether, is not a security, something just didn’t seem right. Indeed, that speech didn’t appear on Hinman’s official SEC calendar. The SEC has also forcefully refused under several chairman – including current Chairman Gary Gensler – to ever prejudge the status of a digital tok ..read more

By Empower Oversight. February 15, 2024. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has disclosed that its Office of Inspector General (OIG) is nearing the end of an investigation related to financial conflict of interest issues identified and referred to the OIG by Empower Oversight in May 2022. It’s the first acknowledgment of an open probe on the matter by the agency’s internal watchdog. According to the SEC, “OIG has authorized us to inform you that OIG has an open investigation into the matter that they are in the final stages of completing.” Empower Oversight’s referral cited ..read more

By Matthew Goldstein and David Yaffe-Bellany. (The New York Times). January 26, 2024. For more than a decade, the pioneers of the cryptocurrency industry envisioned digital coins as an alternate branch of finance, a renegade sector that would operate outside the reach of big banks and government regulators. But as digital currencies like Bitcoin and Ether became more mainstream, the crypto industry collided with a 1946 Supreme Court decision that created what is known as the Howey Test, a legal analysis that determines when a financial product becomes subject to the same strict rules as s ..read more