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On March 9, 2022, the Biden Administration released its much-anticipated “Executive Order on Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets”. The White House describes the Executive Order as the “first whole-of-government strategy” on digital assets and attempts to strike a balance between encouraging innovation and US leadership in the digital asset space, while signaling an appetite to protect against a variety of stated risks through additional regulation and legislation. …
Continue Reading President Biden Issues Executive Order on Digital Assets

In 15 recent enforcement actions, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced charges against various digital asset exchanges for failure to register appropriately as futures commission merchants. This series of actions is the latest in an ongoing regulatory crackdown across federal agencies involving cryptocurrency and other digital asset trading platforms.
Continue Reading CFTC Charges Crypto Platforms for Registration and Trading Violations

In a settled enforcement case announced August 9, 2021, the SEC fined Poloniex, LLC, a crypto trading platform, for operating an unregistered securities exchange. Then, on August 10, 2021, the CFTC and FinCEN announced a settled enforcement case against crypto exchange BitMEX for anti-money laundering violations and failure to register with the CFTC as a trading platform. The cases highlight US regulators’ increased focus on cryptocurrency exchanges.
Continue Reading Regulators Continue Crackdown on Crypto Exchanges

A recent Bloomberg article reported that average prices for nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, are down approximately 70 percent from recent highs. A wide range of NFTs have begun to enter the marketplace over the past several months. A digital work of art represented by an NFT recently sold at auction for over $69 million, and even a professional sports league has begun to issue NFTs. A fascinating debate about the social and economic utility of NFTs has emerged, but what are some of the legal issues associated with this new digital asset class?
Continue Reading The Nonfungible Token

On October 8, 2020, the Department of Justice’s Cyber-Digital Task Force released an 83-page report entitled “Cryptocurrency: An Enforcement Framework.” The DOJ report highlights many of the legal and enforcement risks posed in the burgeoning crypto marketplace, and includes various enforcement case studies as well as informative graphics.
Continue Reading DOJ Releases Cryptocurrency Enforcement Report

In a television interview on November 19, 2019, CFTC Chairman Heath Tarbert discussed digital assets and the importance of U.S. leadership in this space. Notably, he stated:

“I want the United States to lead, particularly in the blockchain technology that underlies digital assets… [U]ltimately I could see it overtaking the internet or being effectively parallel to the internet in using a variety of different kinds of transactions, not just the financial system, but in other types of transactions as well… I think whoever ends up leading in this technology will end up writing the rules of the road for the rest of the world. My emphasis is on making sure that the United States is a leader.”…
Continue Reading CFTC Chairman Discusses Digital Assets