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Cryptocurrency

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France has regulated Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and intermediaries providing crypto-asset services by virtue of its PACTE law n° 2019-486 of 22 May 2019. Its aim was twofold: France wanted to attract meritorious projects to its territory while also bringing this ecosystem within the ambit of regulation. Thus, while France transposed the EU Fifth Anti-Money Laundering-Directive (AML-Directive), it went a step further by imposing additional regulatory duties on intermediaries. In this respect, it has provided…

On May 13, 2020, Kenneth A. Blanco, the Director of the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) delivered a speech at the ConsenSys Blockchain Conference. As Mr. Blanco notes in his speech, FinCEN is the primary regulatory and administrator of the Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”), which serves as the legal architecture for anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing in the U.S. FinCEN collects and analyzes information about financial transactions in order to combat domestic and…

Ukraine is actively promoting a friendly regulatory environment for blockchain/cryptocurrency projects, in both the public and private sectors. On May 18, 2020, the Ministry of Digital Transformation (MDT) launched a public consultation in relation to the draft law on the virtual assets (available here in Ukrainian). Among other things, it sets out (i) the legal status of the virtual assets; (ii) their issuance rules; (iii) the relevant regulator and scope of its powers; and (iv) the…

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a complaint, on April 16, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, charging defendants Alan Friedland of Florida and his Florida-based companies, Fintech Investment Group, Inc. (Fintech) and Compcoin LLC, with fraudulently soliciting more than $1.6 million from their customers in connection with a leveraged or margined off-exchange foreign currency (forex) scheme. According to the complaint, starting in at least 2016 and proceeding through 2018, Friedland and his companies fraudulently…

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges on April 2, 2020 against Texas resident and former pastor Larry Donnell Leonard, II, his wife Shuwana Leonard, and two related entities for defrauding hundreds of retail investors. The SEC’s complaint alleges that the Leonards and two companies they control, Teshuater, LLC and Teshua Business Group, LLC, targeted investors in the African-American community with three separate fraudulent offerings, raising nearly $500,000 from over 500 investors across the…

In April 2018, India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), banned domestic financial institutions from providing banking services to cryptocurrency exchanges. The Statement issued at that time provided: “It has been decided that, with immediate effect, entities regulated by RBI shall not deal with or provide services to any individual or business entities dealing with or settling [cryptocurrencies]. Regulated entities which already provide such services shall exit the relationship within a specified time.” …

Summary On December 13 2019, in the case of AA v Persons Unknown [2019] EWHC 3556 (Comm), the UK Commercial Court granted an interim proprietary injunction over Bitcoin, thereby confirming its status as property. Background In October 2019, cyber-attackers hacked into the computer system of a Canadian insurance company and installed malware which encrypted those systems, preventing anyone but the hackers from accessing them. The hackers then offered decryption software to the insurance company in…

On 3 January, 2020, Tang Sisi, the Vice-Chair of the Smart City Development Research Centre at China’s State Information Centre (CSIC) announced that a Blockchain Service Network (BSN) will launch for commercial purposes in April 2020. What is the BSN? The BSN is a state-backed national blockchain service infrastructure platform that spans public networks, regions and institutions. It was planned by CSIC and independently developed by China UnionPay, China Mobile and others. The BSN has…

We have previously reported on the SEC’s case against Longfin Corp and its founding CEO and controlling shareholder, Venkata Meenavalli.  The SEC’s complaint alleged that Longfin and Meenavalli obtained qualification for a Regulation A+ offering by falsely representing in public filings that the company was managed and operated in the U.S.  According to the complaint, Longfin and Meenavalli then distributed over 400,000 Longfin shares to Meenavalli’s affiliates, and misrepresented the offering to Nasdaq in order to meet…

On October 9, 2019, the U.S. tax authority (the Internal Revenue Service or “IRS”) released Revenue Ruling 2019-24 providing guidance on the U.S. income tax treatment of hard forks and airdrops of cryptocurrency (see our prior post about this guidance).  On December 20, 2019, eight members of the U.S. Congress sent a letter to the Commissioner of the IRS stating that they were “concerned that this recent guidance raises many new questions related to the…