In somewhat of a surprising turn of events, on February 19, 2025, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed voluntary motions to dismiss its appeals of parallel decisions handed down by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor. These decisions had vacated the SEC’s February 2024 “Dealer Rule” that sought to broaden the definition of “dealer” to include proprietary trading firms, certain hedge funds, and crypto firms. This move by the SEC is another indication in…
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…
One of the persistent complaints over the way the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has operated in the digital asset space is its failure to issue clear guidelines. Within days of the inauguration of President Trump, and consistent with SEC acting Chairman Mark Uyeda’s commitment to shifting the regulator toward setting clear guidelines for digital assets, on January 23, 2025, the SEC issued Staff Accounting Bulletin (SAB) No. 122, effectively rescinding the controversial SAB No.…
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…
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has charged two California men in Los Angeles federal court with defrauding investors of more than $22 million in what DOJ describes as the largest non-fungible tokens (NFT) scheme it has ever prosecuted. View the indictment here. Both defendants, aged 23 and hailing from Thousand Oaks, California, were charged with defrauding investors of over $22 million through a series of NFT rug pulls. The term “rug pull” refers to…
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.…
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…