Welcome to This Week in Crypto, a newsletter covering the most important crypto news for the week.?If you want this update sent to your email every Friday morning, subscribe at www.thecryptolegalhandbook.com/newsletter.
- SAB 121: A Bipartisan Win For Crypto?– The week's big news was that several Democrat Senators joined Republicans to pass a resolution to withdraw the SEC’s anti-crypto “Staff Accounting Bulletin 121.” SAB 121 is accounting guidance that makes it functionally impossible for large financial institutions to act as digital asset custodians. The resolution has now passed both houses of Congress and will go to President Biden…who has already threatened to veto it.?
- FIT 21 Act?- The House will take up a comprehensive crypto bill, the “Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act,” next week. The Bill aims to create a regulatory framework around digital assets by expanding the CFTC’s role. It would also purport to limit the SEC to oversight only over digital assets that are themselves securities.?
Now, to determine whether a digital asset is a security we still have to go?way back to Florida in the 1940s…to a time where all there were was orange groves, far as the eye could see…
- MEV Fraud Case?- In a first-of-its-kind prosecution, the DOJ brought fraud charges against two brothers related to the pair's exploiting the Ethereum blockchain through a maximal extractable value (MEV) attack. The details are complex, but involve bait transactions targetting trading bots in order to obtain and then launder around $25M in crypto. ?
- FalconX Settles with CFTC?- The CFTC settled charges with prime brokerage FalconX for $1.8M for failing to register as a futures commission merchant before offering U.S. institutional clients access to futures and swaps.
- Say Cheese!????- Wisconsin became the first state with Bitcoin exposure when its investment fund purchased $100M of shares in BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETFs.?
- A Brief Update:? Kraken filed its?Reply Brief?in support of its Motion to Dismiss the SEC’s case against the exchange. The hearing on Kraken’s Motion is scheduled for June 12.?
- Another Brief Update: The SEC filed its?Opposition to Coinbase’s petition for an interlocutory appeal?of an order denying the exchange’s motion to dismiss the SEC’s claims against it on the pleadings.
- Shouldn’t All These Crypto Lawyers Start Learning About Crypto??- Finally, I authored an op-ed in CoinDesk expressing my frustration at how many lawyers representing the crypto industry don’t seem to know the first thing about crypto. It may surprise you, but expecting lawyers to learn about the industry they represent is a surprisingly controversial take…among lawyers who don’t understand the industry they represent.
Still need a primer on crypto law?
