Regulatory Ramblings: Episode 66 – The U.S. Strategic Reserve and the Emerging Multipolar Crypto World + Recent Developments in US Virtual Asset Regulation with Henri Arslanian and Andrew Fei
Creating A User Friendly Blockchain with Andrew Levine, CEO, Koinos Group
An Introduction to Crypto for Financial Services Professionals
The episode opens with Andrew Fei discussing recent US crypto regulatory developments. Then, Henri Arslanian, a leading voice in global crypto circles, shares his insights on the Trump administration’s decision to establish a...more
Executive Order Establishes Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, Digital Asset Stockpile - On March 6, President Trump issued an executive order (EO), Establishment of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and United States Digital Asset...more
Crypto Exchanges and Stablecoin Issuers Announce Multiple New Products - Multiple crypto sector companies have recently announced new products. In a press release, LayerZero, “an omnichain interoperability protocol that...more
Crypto Companies Announce New Stablecoin Products and Partnerships - In recent press releases, U.S. crypto companies Paxos and Ripple announced new stablecoin products and partnerships. Paxos announced the launch of a new...more
Leading U.S. Crypto Companies Announce Multiple New Products, Integrations - A major U.S. cryptocurrency exchange recently announced the launch of cbBTC – an ERC20 token backed 1:1 by bitcoin held by the exchange. The new...more
Crypto Offerings Launch by Major Investment Bank, Asset Manager and Insurer - According to a recent report, a major multinational investment bank and financial services firm is now allowing its investment advisors to pitch...more
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved proposals from three stock exchanges to list and trade shares of 11 spot bitcoin-based products (the “Spot BTC Approval”). Following the Spot BTC Approval, the...more
The New Year is upon us, which means plenty of news stories looking back at blockchain events in 2023, such as this one (From NFTs to XRP: the biggest crypto stories of 2023 (Axios)), this one (The Year that Cryptocurrency...more
Starting July 1, 2025, any person or entity engaged in a “digital financial asset business activity” within California or with a California resident will be required to obtain a license from the California Department of...more
Last month, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced settled charges against three decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols for various registration and related violations under the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA)...more
Federal and state regulators have taken an increased interest in regulating cryptocurrencies, digital assets, and the larger blockchain ecosystem. This landscape is opaque and rapidly evolving, and many industry participants...more
European Bank Launches Stablecoin; Financial Firms Expand Crypto Products - A subsidiary of a major European financial services firm recently launched EUR CoinVertible (EURCV), an Ethereum ERC20 stablecoin backed 1:1 by...more
On March 29, the National Futures Association (“NFA”) promulgated Compliance Rule 2-51, setting forth Requirements for Members and Associates Engaged in Activities Involving Digital Asset Commodities, which includes both...more
As discussed in Part I of this series, Ordinals are a pioneering new method of utilizing the Bitcoin blockchain that will usher in new and innovative use cases on Bitcoin. As promised, in Part II we will discuss the...more
The NFT community has been humming in 2023 after the recent rise in Bitcoin NFT mints. Ordinals, a non-fungible token (“NFT”) protocol, sent the community buzzing in January 2023 when it launched on the Bitcoin blockchain (as...more
White House Addresses Crypto Risks; Blockchain Firm Wins Air Force Contract - The White House issued a statement last week briefly outlining the Biden administration’s road map to mitigate the risks of cryptocurrencies,...more
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed an enforcement action against crypto influencer Ian Balina in the Western District of Texas alleging that he promoted unregistered securities in connection with the...more
Just 10 years ago, only your millennial, techie cousin had ever heard of, let alone purchased, any cryptocurrency. Fast forward to 2021, and the volume of cryptocurrency transactions has grown to $15.8 trillion....more
The Merge is complete. A massive and long-anticipated software update to the Ethereum blockchain, the Merge went into effect on Thursday, September 15. Its implications are far reaching. The Ethereum blockchain is a pillar of...more
On September 15, 2022, the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry (the “Ag. Committee”) held a hearing to discuss Senate Bill 4760, titled the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act of 2022 (the “Bill”)...more
Ethereum’s transition to proof of stake presents opportunities and pitfalls for certain digital assets and tokens built on the network. After years of development, the Ethereum blockchain appears poised to make its...more
If your staff member wants his or her paycheck in cryptocurrency, should you – as an employer keeping up with the times — accommodate the request? You don’t have to work in Silicon Valley or play for the NFL to field this...more
On May 25, 2022, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) conducted a public hearing to consider a request from LedgerX, LLC, d.b.a. FTX US Derivatives (“FTX”), to amend its order of registration as a...more
Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Ethereum. You have likely heard of these terms as cryptocurrencies, and Bitcoin in particular, have seen immense growth in recent years, the so-called “digital gold rush.” In 2021, cryptocurrencies,...more
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has not hesitated to conclude that crypto assets are securities subject to the Securities Act of 1933, but with BlockFi, the SEC went a step further and, for the first time with...more