On April 10, 2025, the SEC’s newly formed Crypto Task Force held the second of its promised series of roundtables in the SEC’s “Spring Sprint Toward Crypto Clarity” initiative. Titled “Between a Block and a Hard Place:...more
Japanese Crypto Exchange Goes Public in U.S., Stablecoin Initiatives Announced - According to recent reports, the parent company of Coincheck, one of Japan’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has gone public on a major...more
According to a recent press release by the banking cooperative that operates the world’s foremost global payment messaging network, central and commercial banks will soon be able to use the network “to carry out trial...more
Pig Butchering Crypto Scams are scams which resemble the practice of fattening a hog before slaughter....more
On March 26, 2024, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) filed a complaint (the “Complaint”) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (“SDNY”) for injunctive and other relief against...more
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency trading platform, has recently been hit with a staggering $4.3 billion fine for intentionally violating anti-money laundering laws and other financial regulations. This landmark...more
The CFTC has announced three enforcement actions this month that further cement the CFTC’s jurisdiction over the decentralized finance space (“DeFi”). Back in 2022, the CFTC filed its first DeFi cases, including the...more
On March 27, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”), the U.S. derivatives regulator, charged three Binance entities (collectively “Binance”) and its founder and chief compliance officer (“CCO”) with numerous...more
In last week's Cabinet News and Views, we examined the U.S. regulators' approach to the digital asset space, with a focus on the assertion of jurisdiction by the CFTC, the SEC, prudential regulators, state executive and...more
Over the last five years, decentralized finance (DeFi), especially cryptocurrencies and other digital assets are a space that continues to grow at an exponential rate, not only for retail investors but also for private...more
On January 3, 2022, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the “CFTC”) entered an order charging Blockratize, Inc. (d/b/a Polymarket.com) (“Polymarket”) with offering off-exchange binary options contracts and failing to...more
With new types of digital assets and related business on the rise, federal authorities have been busy investigating. Recently, the SEC, FinCEN and the CFTC have imposed some notable settlements involving cryptocurrency...more
Incorporating in the Seychelles but Allegedly Operating in the U.S. Spells Trouble for Company and its Founders - The Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange, or BitMEX, is a large and well-known online trading platform dealing in...more
BitMEX, a Seychelles-based centralized exchange for trading derivatives on bitcoin, ether and litecoin, and certain of its executives have been charged with a number of violations under the U.S. Commodity Exchange Act (CEA),...more
The Regulation of Retail Commodity Transactions—History and Background - On March 24, 2020, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the Commission or the CFTC) finalized long-awaited interpretive guidance regarding...more
On March 24, 2020, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the Commission or the CFTC) finalized long-awaited interpretive guidance regarding what constitutes the “actual delivery” of a digital asset in the context of...more
It is official. Finally. On October 10, 2019, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) Chairman Heath Tarbert announced that he believes ether is a commodity and thus falls under the jurisdiction of the CFTC....more
Last week, J. Christopher Giancarlo promised a “workable” revised position limits proposed rule before he leaves as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission sometime this summer. Separately, the Securities and...more
This is the inaugural issue of The Distributed Ledger, a periodic publication covering the latest trends and developments in blockchain technology, digital assets and smart contracts. In this edition, we examine a federal...more
On April 17, 2018, the New York Attorney General’s Office (“OAG”) launched a Virtual Markets Integrity Initiative and sent letters to thirteen cryptoasset trading platforms requesting, through a questionnaire, disclosures on...more