In September 2021, El Salvador made headlines by becoming the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender (see our post). This bold move, spearheaded by President Nayib Bukele, aimed to revolutionize the nation’s financial system, promote financial inclusion, and attract foreign investment. However, the journey has been fraught with challenges and controversies, culminating in a recent agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that has led to significant policy changes. This…
When President Trump nominated Caroline Crenshaw as a Commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2020, she was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. President Biden renominated Commissioner Crenshaw earlier this year but the Senate did not vote on the confirmation prior to the November 5 election. A vote by the Senate Banking Committee was supposed to take place during a meeting this past Wednesday, December 11, 2024, but the meeting was postponed at…
In an opinion issued on November 26, 2024, a unanimous three-judge panel of the United Staes Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed a lower court’s decision and held that the United States Treasury Department did not have the right to sanction Tornado Cash because the statute that Treasury relied on authorized sanctions against “property” and Tornado Cash is not property. This blog post is a summary of the content of the court’s opinion.…
We have previously written about the recent decision that allowed a lawsuit to go forward against Shaquille O’Neal and others related to his role in the Astrals Project. Shaq and his son, Myles O’Neal, were founders of the Astrals Project. As alleged in the lawsuit, Astrals Project is a collection of 10,000 NFTs 3D avatars (designed by artist Damien Guimoneau), which Plaintiffs alleged was aimed to promote investment in a virtual world in which users…
There have been numerous lawsuits brought against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleging that it has acted improperly and outside the law in regulating the crypto industry through enforcement actions and threats – rather than through regulation. See here (Consensys lawsuit) and here (Crypto.com lawsuit). On November 14, 2024, Attorneys General from 18 states brought their own lawsuit, naming as defendants the SEC, Chairman Gary Gensler, and each of the Commissioners (in their…
Those familiar with the career of Elon Musk and his use of tongue-in-cheek conventions (such as tweeting about taking Tesla private at $420 a share), were probably not surprised, based on the many reports of actions he took relating to Dogecoin, that the new government commission he has been tasked with co-leading has the acronym DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). And, within days of the report of the creation of DOGE, the plaintiffs who brought…
In re Celsius Network LLC, Case No. 22-10964 (MG) (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Oct. 24, 2024), was a case in bankruptcy court in New York in which the litigation administrator for the post-effective date debtors in the well-publicized bankruptcy of the Celsius cryptocurrency platform brought suit attempting to avoid allegedly fraudulent transfers and recover property of the bankruptcy estate. These particular transfers were made to digital wallets and cryptocurrency exchange accounts of defendants who were anonymous. Neither…
Coinme Inc. describes itself as a company that started with a handful of Bitcoin ATMs but now has thousands, which is just one of the means by which it offers the public access to cryptocurrencies. In an Order dated October 25, 2024 and made public on November 4. 2024, Connecticut’s Banking Commissioner (the “Commissioner”) suspended Coinme’s ability to transfer money in Connecticut. Connecticut participated in a multistate examination of Coinme in 2023, along with Colorado,…
On January 10, 2024, after 10 years of saying “no,” the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved the application for eleven spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Within four months, Bitcoin hit record highs and more than $30 billion was invested in the Bitcoin ETFs. Then, on May 23, 2024, the SEC surprised the crypto community when it effectively approved the sale of spot Ether ETFs (see here). Those ETFs started trading in late July…
In 2021, we reported that the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire dismissed a lawsuit that sought to block the United States Internal Revenue Service’s effort to obtain records from cryptocurrency exchanges that included account information about individual accounts. In a decision on September 24, 2024, the First Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that dismissal. The case concerned a 2019 episode in which the IRS sent about 10,000 letters to taxpayers…