On April 17, 2024, Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis and Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand introduced the bipartisan Lummis-Gillibrand Payment Stablecoin Act, which creates a clear regulatory framework for payment stablecoins that the Senators said will protect consumers, enable innovation and promote U.S. dollar dominance while preserving the dual banking system. Heads of both the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department have recently called for Congress to regulate stablecoins. The Bill provides, among other things: (1) For depository institutions (banks)…
In a long-awaited update on its plans for the UK’s crypto regulatory framework, on 30 October 2023, HM Treasury issued three interlinked policy documents on the future regulation of crypto, covering fiat-backed stablecoins, the wider cryptoasset regulatory regime, and the failure of systemic digital settlement asset firms. The UK regulators followed shortly after, issuing a set of discussion papers and documents on 6 November 2023 on the forthcoming stablecoin regime, setting out their initial views…
On October 5, 2023, the Canadian Securities Administrators published guidance on dealing in Stablecoins, including by imposing updated terms and conditions for crypto asset trading platforms that offer Stablecoins, and requiring issuers of certain Stablecoins to provide undertakings in a form substantially acceptable to the regulators by December 1, 2023. For a complete discussion, click here.
On September 18, 2023 the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) issued an update on an ongoing initiative to strengthen DFS oversight of virtual currencies. A central aspect of the proposed guidance are enhanced criteria for coin-listing and delisting procedures. DFS wants to establish itself (or, as DFS sees it, maintain is role) as the leading cryptocurrency regulator in the country. Towards that end, the DFS press release states: “The Department has added more…
On September 7th, 2023, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) announced settlement orders against three operators of decentralized finance (“DeFi”) protocols: Opyn, Inc. (“Opyn”), Deridex, Inc. (“Deridex”), and ZeroEx, Inc. (“ZeroEx”). The announcement is a clear message that the CFTC will be asserting jurisdiction in the DeFi space, and may be as much a signal to the SEC as it is a message to the DeFi industry that the CFTC is claiming crypto regulatory…
On November 1, 2021, the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets issued its long-awaited “Report on STABLECOINS.” The Working Group is an inter-agency group made up of the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Federal Deposit Insurance Company and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency contributed to the Report as well. A stablecoin is a digital currency that is pegged to a…
On July 21, 2021, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler spoke at an American Bae Association event. His main topic was security-based swaps. But at the end of his prepared remarks, the Chairman went out of his way to comment about the intersection of security-based swaps and financial technology, including cryptoassets. With respect to initiatives to offer crypto tokens or other products that are priced off of the value of securities and operate…
The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) published a letter on January 4, 2021 (January 2021 Letter) clarifying the authority of national banks and thrift institutions (collectively, Banks) to participate in independent node verification networks (INVN) and use stablecoins to conduct payment activities and other bank-permissible functions. The January 2021 Letter follows a September 21, 2020 letter from the OCC (see our post here) which concludes that Banks may hold “reserves” on…
On September 21, 2020, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the regulatory agency charged with overseeing banks, published an interpretive letter clarifying national banks’ and federal savings associations’ authority to hold “reserves” on behalf of customers who issue certain stablecoins. Generally, a stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency designed to have a stable value as compared with other types of cryptocurrency, which frequently experience significant volatility. One type of stablecoin is…