The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced yesterday it had both filed and settled charges against three “decentralized finance” operations, Opyn Inc., ZeroEx Inc., and Deridex Inc. In the agency’s own language, the charges included “failing to register as a swap execution facility (SEF) or designated contract market…
Read MoreFrom Van Loon v. Department of Treasury, decided Thursday by Judge Robert Pitman (W.D. Tex.): This case is about Tornado Cash—but the parties disagree on how to characterize Tornado Cash. Plaintiffs contend that Tornado Cash is a decentralized, open-source software project comprised of a subset of smart contracts,…
Read MoreAfter 22 years on Wall Street, Caitlin Long got intrigued by bitcoin and the blockchain in 2012. From 2018 through 2020 she served as a member of the Wyoming Blockchain Task Force, which made the Cowboy State the most welcoming for blockchain companies. Long is the founder and…
Read MoreThe global movement against free trade and capitalism that burst into public consciousness at the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization coalesced around the idea that Western elites had ensnared Third World nations in a debt trap to coerce them into adopting neoliberal policies. When poor nations…
Read MoreIn a Financial Services Committee hearing this week, Rep. Brad Sherman (D–Calif.) had some choice words for bitcoin bros: JUST IN: ???????? US Congressman says #Bitcoin creator “Saratoshi Nagamoto” was not innovative. pic.twitter.com/3i0AhKOcSN — Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) July 26, 2023 “We are told that cryptocurrency is very innovative,” said…
Read MoreNew bipartisan crypto bill would “create a federal regulatory framework.” Sens. Cynthia Lummis (R–Wyo.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D–N.Y.) have introduced a proposal to regulate cryptocurrency, called the “Responsible Financial Innovation Act.” It’s a reintroduction of a bill proposed last year, with some new sections added. “This bill is…
Read MoreIn October 2017, a SWAT team showed up at Jameson Lopp’s house in North Carolina, allegedly because of a fake complaint called in by someone angered by a tweet. So Lopp posted a video of himself firing an AR-15 and then embarked on a journey to disappear in…
Read MoreCaitlin Long wants to start a new kind of bank…based on a very old model. “A 100 percent reserve bank that would keep all of our cash at the Fed,” she says. She was influenced by the work of Austrian economist Murray Rothbard, who saw fractional reserve banking as…
Read MoreThe European Union’s recent adoption of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) into law represents a huge, and foolish, step in how Europe approaches the regulation of crypto. Given recent regulatory actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) aimed at crypto exchanges in the United States, many…
Read MoreFifteen years after Satoshi Nakamoto dropped a nine-page white paper on an obscure email list sketching out an idea for a new peer-to-peer digital currency, bitcoin has become a global phenomenon. And nowhere is its pomp and promise more on display than at the blockbuster annual conferences put…
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