The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) released a policy brief Wednesday on cryptocurrency. It is the third brief in a row the agency has dedicated to crypto, and together they represent a detailed assessment of the risks crypto presents for developing economies and options for resolving those risks. UNCTAD Policy Brief No.
Regulation
India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED), the agency responsible for financial crimes, is looking at cryptocurrency exchanges suspected of processing transactions that sent more than 10 billion rupees, or about $130 million, from firms under investigation to international wallets. At least ten crypto exchanges are allegedly involved, according to an official who spoke to The Economic Times,
The chair of South Korea’s Financial Services Commission said the regulator plans to expedite its review of 13 bills pending in the country’s National Assembly related to digital assets. According to a Thursday report from South Korean news outlet Edaily, Financial Services Commission chair Kim Joo-hyun said a task force consisting of private experts and
Mark Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur who has been quite active in the crypto ecosystem for the past year, is facing a class-action lawsuit over his promotions of the bankrupt crypto brokerage firm Voyager Digital. The Moskowitz Law Firm filed a civil suit in the United States District Court in Southern Florida against Cuban for promoting Voyager’s
It’s a story that still haunts the early generation of Canadian crypto users to this day. Four years prior, Gerald Cotten, co-founder of Canada’s then-largest cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, died under mysterious circumstances in India. But, before his passing, Cotten took virtual keys for digital wallets and moved them into cold storage, leading to the permanent
The United States subsidiary of electronic trading platform developer Clear Markets has reportedly received approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, to offer over-the-counter crypto derivatives products with physical settlement. In a Tuesday notice, SBI Holdings — a stakeholder of Clear Markets — said the CFTC had approved the U.S. subsidiary operating a
On Thursday, cryptocurrency exchange Hotbit said it “suspended trading, deposit, withdrawal and funding functions,” with no timeframe for resumption. In explaining the decision, Hotbit stated: “A former Hotbit management employee who left in April this year was, unbeknownst to Hotbit, involved in a project in 2021 that law enforcement authorities now think is suspected of
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, has proposed requiring large advisers to certain hedge funds to report any exposure to digital assets. In a Wednesday notice, the SEC and CFTC proposed amending their confidential reporting form for certain investment advisers to private funds of
The Department of Financial Protection and Innovation of California (DFPI) continues to bring actions against crypto interest account providers, failing to comply with the local law. After commanding BlockFi and Voyager to stop their offerings in the state, the DFPI issued a desist and refrain order to crypto lending firm Celsius. The order simply means
Voyager Digital, the crypto lending firm that went bust due to the crypto contagion initiated by Three Arrow Capital’s (3AC) insolvency is currently fighting its bankruptcy court battle. The court proceedings and financial documents have shown a deep relation between the crypto lending firm and Sam Bankman Fried-owned Alameda Research. Alameda is a quantitative trading
Struggling through decades of economic sanctions, Iran has placed its first international import order using $10 million worth of cryptocurrency, according to a senior government trade official. News that the Islamic republic placed its first import order using crypto was shared by Iran’s Deputy Minister of Industry, Mine & Trade Alireza Peyman-Pak in a Twitter
On Tuesday, one day after the U.S. Treasury sanctioned cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash for its alleged role in cryptocurrency money laundering operations, intervals of 0.1 Ether (ETH) transactions began materializing from the smart contract to prominent figures such as Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and American television host Jimmy Fallon. It is not possible to trace the source of
The aggregate total value locked (TVL) in the crypto market measures the amount of funds deposited in smart contracts and this figure declined from $160 billion in mid-April to the current $70 billion, which is the lowest level since March 2021. While this 66% contraction is worrying, a great deal of data suggests that the
According to Twitter user @0xdev0, on Monday, Web3 development platform Alchemy and Infura.io blocked remote procedure call (RPC) requests to cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash, preventing users from accessing the applications. The day prior, the U.S. Treasury placed 44 smart contract addresses linked to Tornado Cash in the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list.
The Reserve Bank of Australia weighs in the central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) race to explore use cases for a CBDC in the country. It will collaborate with the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) on a respective research project. As stated in an announcement from Aug. 9, the joint project of the Reserve Bank
The Coinbase drama, which started at the end of July, continues with new developments. Last week, former Coinbase Global product manager Ishan Wahi pleaded not guilty to two counts of wire fraud conspiracy and two counts of wire fraud in a Manhattan federal court. Wahi was arrested during his attempt to board a flight from
Roman Semenov, one of the co-founders of Tornado Cash, has reported his account was suspended at the developer platform, GitHub, following the United States Treasury Department’s sanctioning of the privacy protocol. In a Monday tweet, Semenov said that despite not being individually named as a Specially Designated National, or SDN, of Treasury’s Office of Foreign
According to crypto data aggregator Dune Analytics, on Monday, Circle, the issuer of the USD Coin stablecoin (USDC), froze over 75,000 USDC worth of funds linked to the 44 Tornado Cash addresses sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control’s (OFAC) Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list. Tornado Cash is a decentralized
The United States Treasury Department has added more than 40 cryptocurrency addresses allegedly connected to controversial mixer Tornado Cash to the Specially Designated Nationals list of the Office of Foreign Asset Control, or OFAC. In a Monday announcement, OFAC effectively barred U.S. residents from using Tornado Cash and placed 44 USD Coin (USDC) and Ether
When the United States Office of Government Ethics (OGE) released its Legal Advisory 22-04 on July 5, most attention was given to its conclusion that federal employees who own any amount of cryptocurrency or stablecoins whatsoever may not participate in regulation and policymaking that concerns crypto. The legal advisory (LA) raised some eyebrows, as de