Ripple Labs has struck a blow against the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) case after the presiding judge made a ruling that one Ripple community lawyer calls “a very big win for Ripple.” The SEC filed suit in 2020 against Ripple and executives Brad Garlinghouse and Christian Larsen for selling unregistered securities. Presiding Judge Sarah
Regulation
Virgil Griffith, a former Ethereum (ETH) developer has been sentenced to 63 months in prison and will pay a fine of $100,000 for attending a conference and assisting North Korea use blockchain technology in contravention of economic sanctions imposed by the United States. On Tuesday, April 12, U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel of the Southern
The Bank for International Settlements, or BIS, released a paper Tuesday on central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, and how they can be used to meet policy goals for financial inclusion. The paper drew on interviews conducted in the second half of last year at nine central banks that are currently exploring retail CBDCs. It
The president of the Central Bank of Brazil confirmed that the country’s sovereign digital currency pilot will go live this year, Cointelegraph Brazil reported. The confirmation about the central bank’s digital currency came during an event on Monday, where Roberto Campos Neto, the president of the Central Bank of Brazil, noted that a pilot CBDC
Payments giant Mastercard has filed 15 nonfungible token (NFT) and metaverse trademark applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, or USPTO. Highlights of the filings include plans for a virtual community for interacting with digital assets, processing of payment cards in the metaverse, an online marketplace for buyers and sellers of downloadable digital
Last week, there was a lot of regulatory talk about crypto-related risks. While this is very common in itself, some angles and proposed solutions to such risks came across as novel. In the United States, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) issued a letter to commercial and savings banks under its purview, or all federally
The largest US-based crypto exchange Coinbase has stopped payment services through United Payments Interface (UPI) on its platform for Indian users just three days after its launch in the South Asian subcontinent. The UPI is the payment portal governed by the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI), which facilitates buy orders on Coinbase’s India services.
Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange in terms of trading volume, received in-principle approval to operate in Abu Dhabi, marking its third regulatory approval in the Middle Eastern region after Bahrain and Dubai. The in-principle approval from the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) allows Binance to operate as a broker-dealer in digital assets including cryptocurrencies
In an important precedent, a Supreme Court judge in New York state’s Yates County ruled in favor of cryptocurrency mining firm Greenidge Generation, dismissing a petition filed by a coalition of environmental activists. According to an Apr. 7 press release by Greenidge, judge Daniel Doyle dismissed a petition against the Greenidge Generation Holdings that a
The Council of the European Union has cut Russians off from certain cryptocurrency services as part of a package of restrictive measures against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “brutal aggression against Ukraine and its people.” In a Friday announcement, the EU council said it would be closing potential loopholes in using digital assets for Russian entities
European Central Bank executive board member Fabio Panetta provided an overview of the central bank’s current research on a retail central bank digital currency Friday when he spoke at the IESE Business School Banking Initiative Conference on Technology and Finance. Panetta said the issuance of central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, is “likely to become
The number of firms permitted to offer crypto services to U.K. residents under temporary registration status from the Financial Conduct Authority has dropped from 12 to five. According to a Thursday update to its list of “Cryptoasset firms with Temporary Registration,” the United Kingdom’s financial regulator named CEX.IO, Revolut, Copper, Globalblock and Moneybrain as companies
Following the announced integration of the payment app Strike with e-commerce platform Shopify to accept Bitcoin (BTC) through the Lightning Network, the crypto community raised concerns over the legal implications of the move. Crypto researcher Matt Ahlborg believes that the event is a very significant development for BTC as it allows the offloading of BTC
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the United States government corporation that insures depositors at U.S. commercial and savings banks, issued a financial institution letter Thursday. The letter requests the institutions supervised by the agency to notify the appropriate regional director of their activities with crypto-related assets or their intentions to engage in crypto-related activities. According
Speaking at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, Samson Mow, former chief strategy officer of Blockstream, named three new jurisdictions that would be adopting or proposing to adopt Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender. As told by Mow, the first is that of the Caribbean island Roatán, which is part of Honduras. Honduras Prospera Inc. is
The Crypto Market Integrity Coalition, an organization founded two months ago by 17 cryptocurrency exchanges, firms and industry associations worldwide, announced 13 new members have joined. The group is centered around a pledge endorsed by members’ CEOs or chief compliance officers that (among other things): “We will integrate principles that uphold Market Integrity and Market