United States Senators have cast their votes, and the contentious HR 3684 infrastructure bill cleared in the upper Congress chamber. Now, the gigantic document of over 2,700 pages and amounting to almost $1 trillion is heading to the House of Representatives, including the provisions expanding the definition of a cryptocurrency broker, designed to beef up crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) tax compliance. The $1 trillion can’t come out of thin air, right? While the bill in effect simply follows Financial Action Task Force (FATF) guidelines, doomsayers are already declaring the end is nigh, haunted by visions of the dreaded Internal …

Though Okcoin chief compliance officer Megan Monroe said that there are still certain grey areas over cryptocurrencies in the United States, further regulation may not be the best solution. In a statement to Cointelegraph, Monroe said current U.S. regulations are sufficient to police cryptocurrency exchanges, token issuers and custody wallet providers, but “jurisdictional boundaries of these federal financial regulators are neither clear nor collaborative.” Rather, she advocated for a framework with greater clarity to determine which crypto firms should be subject to regulation and let investors know which protections are available. “A clear regulatory framework with established jurisdictional boundaries, flexible …

Cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com has launched a free tax reporting service for users based in Australia. In an announcement today, Crypto.com said it had tailored its existing tax services for United States- and Canada-based crypto users to allow Australians to accurately report cryptocurrencies on their taxes. The exchange said it worked with professional tax advisers to ensure that the service was consistent with laws for filing cryptocurrency taxes in the country. Crypto.com allows users to import their crypto transaction records into a tax reporting platform such as TokenTax and generate a report to be filed with the authorities — the Internal …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s chairperson Gary Gensler announced this month that the crypto industry should not escape the purview of the regulator. He highlighted that decentralized finance (DeFi) trading and lending protocols need particular attention when it comes to investor protections. Regulation can extend into a menu of options that covers custody, reporting, counterparty verification and asset classification and issuance. Reports are surfacing that people are waiting with bated breath on how the SEC will regulate the DeFi industry, but Germany's Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, also known as BaFin, has found a way to apply existing securities …

The Russian central bank has once again reiterated its negative stance on Bitcoin (BTC), with one of the bank’s top executives comparing the cryptocurrency with a pyramid scheme. Sergey Shvetsov, the first deputy governor at the Bank of Russia, expressed the authority’s concerns over cryptocurrency investment in a Wednesday interview, warning about the perceived risk of losses by investors. Shvetsov said that local investors have been increasingly pouring their money into alternative financial instruments that he referred to as “technological financial pyramids,” stating that Bitcoin is just one of such pyramid schemes. He said that many retail investors expect huge …

United States lawmakers will soon destroy a massive opportunity for job creation and a diverse workforce in blockchain technology if they do not amend infrastructure bill HR 3684, which would require blockchain developers to attain broker status on U.S. soil. HR 3684 does not recognize the taxonomy of the asset class. Not every crypto asset falls under the definition of security — many are transactional tokens and used as consensus mechanisms essential to distributed ledger technology. Requiring broker status for every blockchain developer indicates that U.S. lawmakers have yet to understand blockchain technology or cryptocurrency’s complex and diverse set of …

The Bank of Ghana (BoG) is making another step towards the development of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) by partnering with a German currency technology provider. The BoG officially announced Wednesday that it signed an agreement with German banknote and securities printing company Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) to pilot a retail CBDC in Ghana, West Africa. As part of the agreement, G+D will provide its proprietary CBDC solution known as Filia to pilot the issuance of a digital form of Ghana’s national currency, the cedi. The digital currency will be tested in a trial with local banks, merchants, payment service providers …

The fight for lawmakers to clear up the language used to define brokers in the crypto space may be moving to the United States House of Representatives soon after a failed attempt in the Senate. In a 69-30 vote, the Senate passed HR 3684 this morning, a bipartisan bill that proposes roughly $1 trillion in funding for roads, bridges and major infrastructure projects. However, the bill also suggests implementing tighter rules on businesses handling cryptocurrencies and expanding reporting requirements for brokers, mandating that digital asset transactions worth more than $10,000 are reported to the IRS. Though initially split on the …

The legal battle between the United States Securities Exchange Commission (SEC and blockchain-based payments firm Ripple continues, with the regulator wanting further access to Ripple’s internal communications. The SEC filed a motion with the Southern District of New York on Monday, requesting Judge Sarah Netbrun to order Ripple to produce and submit its employee messaging on business communication platform Slack. The filing notes that Ripple’s previous production of Slack messages to the SEC was incomplete, with the firm eventually admitting that this was caused due to a “data processing mistake” after “repeatedly contending that its Slack production was complete.” The …

A compromise that proposed amending provisions in the bipartisan infrastructure deal on crypto failed to meet the requirements of a unanimous consent request in the United States Senate, making the bill likely to go to a full vote without additional changes. This afternoon, Senator Tom Carper put forth the compromise amendment agreed upon earlier today by senators Pat Toomey, Cynthia Lummis, Rob Portman, Mark Warner, Kyrsten Sinema and Ron Wyden on providing clarity for what defines a crypto broker. However, Alabama Senator Richard Shelby objected when Carper disagreed to add Shelby’s own unrelated amendment to the bill — a proposal …

United States Senators putting forth differing amendments for provisions in the infrastructure deal that apply to crypto have reached a compromise after a legislative setback. In a press conference on Monday, Senator Pat Toomey said there was now a bipartisan agreement on an amendment to infrastructure bill HR 3684, backed by Cynthia Lummis, Rob Portman, Mark Warner, Kyrsten Sinema and Ron Wyden. The Pennsylvania lawmaker said the new amendment would exempt software developers, transaction validators and node operators, while tax reporting requirements “should only apply to the intermediaries.” “We came together to provide greater clarity on the rules for who …

Israel’s national intelligence agency, Mossad, has posted a job listing for an expert in cryptocurrencies who has at least three years of experience in the fintech space. The candidate should have “in-depth technological understanding and expertise in the world of fintech, e-commerce, DEF and digital currencies,” according to the outlined requirements. The role’s description succinctly indicates that it includes “leading, initiating, planning and accompanying systems development activities” — sufficiently open for local media to proffer its own interpretation of what exactly Mossad may be seeking a crypto expert for. Major Israeli news site Ynet, for example, has claimed that Mossad …