Tag: Regulation

Namibia signs crypto exchange regulation bill into law

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The Namibian Government officially signed a law to regulate Virtual Asset Service Providers operating in the country last week, reversing its original 2017 decision to ban cryptocurrency exchanges. On July 21, the VASP-regulating law was inserted into the Gazette of the Republic of Namibia after previously being approved in Namibia’s National Assembly on July 6 and signed by President Hage Geingob on July 14. The bill called the Namibia Virtual Assets Act 2023 aims to assign a regulatory authority to supervise crypto exchanges in the country. It is the first…

US GAO says lack of interagency cooperation needs to be addressed in crypto regulation

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The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), a Congressional watchdog agency, has released a report it completed in June on the regulatory framework for the use of blockchain in finance.  The 77-page report was requested by Reps. Maxine Waters and Stephen Lynch before the midterm elections, when they were the chair and ranking member, respectively, of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee. The report unsurprisingly found that more regulation is needed. The agency has a framework for evaluating regulatory reform proposals developed in 2009. The report pointed to crypto…

European Union Stablecoin Issuers With Bank Assets Will Get Extra Regulation, Banking Authority Says

“Financial distress at one ART [asset-referenced token] or EMT [e-money token] issuer can materially increase the likelihood of distress at other issuers of crypto-assets or at other financial institutions given the network of contractual obligations in which issuers operate,” said the document, seen by CryptoX, referring to the two categories of stablecoin set out in MiCA whose value is tied to fiat currency or other assets. Source AssetsAuthorityBankBankingEuropeanExtraIssuersRegulationStablecoinUnion CryptoX Portal

Senator Kennedy Jr. confronts SEC’s Gary Gensler on crypto regulation

Senator Kennedy Jr. questioned SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s authority and the SEC’s competency in handling crypto fraud at a Senate Committee hearing on July 19. The focus of the debate was FTX, a crypto exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried. Senator Robert F. Kennedy Jr. described him as over-haired and underdressed. The senator expressed disbelief that the SEC had not taken proactive steps to investigate FTX, considering its founder’s high-profile activities and ambitions. Kennedy Jr. argued that the SEC’s regulatory machinery was designed to ensure transparency and combat fraud. However, it…

Ripple court ruling makes call for regulation ‘more compelling and more urgent’ — former CFTC chair

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Timothy Massad, former chair of the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), has said though a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) v. Ripple court ruling may impact the way businesses and lawmakers address crypto, his call for regulatory clarity remains the same. In a July 7 op-ed with The Wall Street Journal, Massad and former SEC chair Jay Clayton suggested that lawsuits brought by the SEC and CFTC against crypto firms were “unlikely to bring about a significant improvement in investor protection and market integrity quickly”. The comments came…

Could the Ripple XRP Ruling Spell the End of the SEC’s Regulation by Enforcement?

The SEC and those who support its approach are likely concerned that this no-good, very bad day becomes no-good, very bad days. A string of court losses with similar legal reasoning as yesterday’s ruling in the Ripple case would weaken anti-crypto Democrats’ negotiating hand further. One takes this risk when placing all their betting chips on a novel legal strategy. When you lose, you lose significantly, and the other side of the debate understands that your negotiating leverage worsens by the day. Source

Ripple Labs Ruling Throws U.S. Crypto-Token Regulation into Disarray – Preston J Byrne

On the second category of sales, programmatic sales, the Court found in Ripple’s favor, arguing that the third, “expectation of profits” prong of Howey was not met. “Ripple’s Programmatic Sales were blind bid/ask transactions,” the Court wrote, “and Programmatic Buyers could not have known if their payments of money went to Ripple, or any other seller of XRP” and as such “a Programmatic Buyer stood in the same shoes as a secondary market purchaser who did not know to whom or what it was paying its money.” Source

US senators reintroduce crypto bill aimed at comprehensive regulation

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United States Sens. Cynthia Lummis and Kirsten Gillibrand will reintroduce legislation aimed at establishing a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets. The U.S. lawmakers said they would reintroduce the Responsible Financial Innovation Act to the Senate on July 12 after roughly a year of being tabled in the previous session of Congress. The bipartisan piece of legislation — Lummis is a member of the Republican Party, and Gillibrand is a Democrat — was aimed at clarifying the roles of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission…

State of Crypto: Policy and Regulation by CoinDesk

State of Crypto: Policy and Regulation is a one-day event uniting key policymakers, regulators and government officials with legal, policy and compliance executives representing the largest and most influential TradFi and DeFi leaders in asset management and financial services. This event is for GCs, CCOs, CLOs, COOs, heads of policy and government affairs who are evaluating or actively investing in digital assets. The industry will meet to set industry standards and align on practical short-term and long-term objectives through pointed conversations with the best legal minds and Washington D.C.’s…