Regulation

The CEO of Osprey Funds — the issuer of over-the-counter Bitcoin trust OBTC —isn’t holding his breath for a Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) approval in the United States this year. Speaking to Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre and Seana Smith on July 19, Greg King said he believes that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

The government of France has proposed that the European Securities and Market Authority, or ESMA, should regulate digital currency activity across the European Union. If enacted, this would establish a single authority over the crypto sector across the trading bloc and would create uniform regulations across the union through ESMA, as suggested by the French

Mumbai-based crypto exchange WazirX has been the target of much of India’s regulatory heat as the company continues to attract local investors.  In the latest run-in with the government, the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) issued a show-cause notice to WazirX for allegedly violating the Foreign Exchange Management Act in relation to transactions worth 2,790.74 crore

The Federal Reserve’s ongoing research into central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, has broadened to include stablecoins and whether they can be effectively regulated.  In their paper, which was published in SSRN’s eLibrary on July 17, Gorton and Zhang argue that “privately produced monies” such as stablecoins are “not an effective medium of exchange because

Japan is strengthening its efforts to regulate digital currencies on a global scale, with related government authorities reportedly looking to expand staff to impose stricter rules. Japanese regulators have expressed fresh concerns over the massive growth of the cryptocurrency market, particularly cautioning against stablecoins, Reuters reported Friday. Tokyo is willing to engage with global financial

It has now been three months since Bitcoin’s price peaked at an all-time high just shy of $65,000. For most of the last two months, Bitcoin (BTC) has been trading in the $30,000–$40,000 range, as much as 54% lower than its peak The downturn came at a time when many analysts were predicting exactly the

Circle’s merger with Concord Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, values Circle at $4.5 billion, and the combined entity is expected to debut on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CRCL before the end of the year. The merger/offering was generally applauded within the crypto industry. Vladimir Vishnevskiy, director and

Authorities in Malaysia destroyed more than $1.2 million worth of Bitcoin mining rigs after they were confiscated for operating illegally. In a video posted today from local news outlet DayakDaily, police in the city of Miri on the island of Borneo and the Sarawak Energy company arranged for a steamroller to run over 1,069 Bitcoin

A major cryptocurrency and blockchain association in Russia is launching a project to bring global crypto mining operations to the country amid a Chinese crypto mining crackdown. The Russian Association of Cryptoeconomics, Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain, or RACIB, announced an initiative aimed at transferring global computing resources for crypto mining to the Russian Federation. More

Much attention has been paid to the global, geopolitical implications of China’s rapid and pioneering development of its digital yuan, also provisionally known as e-CNY. Yet in a new white paper published by the Working Group on E-CNY Research and Development of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), the institution gave a more domestic-focused and

This weekly roundup of news from Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong attempts to curate the industry’s most important news, including influential projects, changes in the regulatory landscape, and enterprise blockchain integrations. It has now been two months since the crypto crackdown and subsequent enforcement began. Most new stories are now just the trickling down

The U.S. Department of State has announced it will be taking a seemingly more active role in the pursuit of keeping some crypto users accountable. According to a Thursday Bloomberg report, the Biden administration intends to ramp up efforts to trace cryptocurrency payments, particularly when it comes to ransomware attacks. The government plans to address

Amid the ongoing regulatory uncertainty to cryptocurrencies in India, a high court in the country’s capital is taking action to regulate advertising by local crypto exchanges. The Delhi High Court has issued notices to local authorities and crypto firms in an effort to enforce guidelines for crypto exchanges advertising on national television, the New Indian

On July 13, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, pushed back its decision on Wisdom Tree’s Bitcoin ETF with a request for public feedback. This request will allow members of the public to communicate their position on whether the trust should be approved or denied. The SEC’s notice stated: “The Commission requests that interested

The European Central Bank, or ECB, joins the growing club of crypto-friendly financial institutions as it announces the decision “to launch a project to prepare for possibly issuing a digital euro.” The ECB’s official tweet noted: “We will look at how a digital euro could be designed and distributed to everyone in the euro area.”

Four men have reportedly been arrested in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture for running an allegedly fraudulent crypto investment scheme that persuaded investors they could reap returns on the basis of an artificial intelligence (AI)-led trading system. Roughly 20,000 Japanese investors nationwide are thought to have been drawn into the scheme, which raised an estimated total of