The cryptocurrency world has been rocked this week by an episode involving the LIBRA token and Argentina’s President Javier Milei. What began as a seemingly promising initiative quickly turned into a controversy that has had significant political and financial repercussions. The LIBRA memecoin was launched on February 14, 2025. One of the men allegedly behind the launch, Kelsier CEO Hayden Davis, claimed that he was also involved in the launch of the MELANIA memecoin (for the…
We have already written about steps taken by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission during the early days of the Trump administration to distinguish itself from the SEC under former chair Gary Gensler. See here. This post examines further evidence of that change. Under Chairman Gensler’s leadership, the SEC took an assertive stance on cryptocurrency regulation. Gensler, who served as SEC Chair from 2021 to January 20, 2025, said that he was prioritizing investor protection…
Crypto asset providers that offer their services in Spain received some good news to pave a renewed push to their marketing efforts during 2025. 2025 welcomes the entering into force of the new European Crypto Asset Regulation (so called MiCAR) which regulates both crypto-asset issuers and other providers. See our earlier posts on MICAR here and here. In parallel with such change, the Spanish financial authority (CNMV) published last 27 December 2024 a circular (Circular…
BitMEX is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency trading platforms. On August 10, 2021, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered a Consent Order that the U.S. Commodities Futures and Trading Commission agreed to with five companies charged with operating BitMEX. The order required the BitMEX entities to pay a $100 million civil monetary penalty. See here BitMEX is owned and operated by HDR Global Trading Limited, which is registered…
Cryptocurrency has been a topic of significant debate and evolution worldwide, and Kenya is no exception. The journey of cryptocurrency regulation in Kenya is a tale of transformation from initial skepticism and outright opposition to eventual acceptance and legalization. In the early 2010s, as cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin began gaining global attention, Kenya’s financial landscape was primarily dominated by traditional banking systems and mobile money services like M-Pesa. The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) was initially…
Social media – with Tik Tok being the primary medium these days – illustrates the continued power of the internet to lift people from obscurity to international stardom. Haliey Welch is a perfect example. The 22-year-old went viral in the summer of 2024 after a street interview where she used the term “hawk tuah” to describe a sex act, which led to her being known as Hawk Tuah Girl. She used her fame to sell…
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.…
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…
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,…