Voting mostly along party lines, the U.S. Senate confirmed the nomination of Gary Gensler to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. In a vote of 53-45 today, the Senate members confirmed the former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. Gensler, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, volunteered to join then President-elect Joe Biden’s team as a financial expert in November. Biden announced the former CFTC was his pick to chair the SEC shortly before his inauguration in January. During his confirmation hearings with the Senate …

The United States Postal Service will soon be stepping into the nonfungible token market. Not to release artwork or music, but rather to help customers purchase postage. In an announcement on Tuesday, communications-as-a-service platform CaseMail said the USPS had certified its postage nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, for use in the United States. The tokens are digitally stamped on the USPS’ ePostage labels and the physical item being mailed, creating a verifiable chain of custody for digital and physical assets, as all data is recorded on the blockchain. "Using NFTs to help protect a process that's both familiar and important to …

Galaxy Digital has submitted a Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. According to the form S-1 published by the SEC on Monday, the Galaxy Bitcoin ETF — if approved — will trade on the NYSE Arca exchange, with the Bloomberg Galaxy Bitcoin index tapped as the pricing mechanism. Detailing the price mechanism for the prospective Bitcoin ETF, the filing reads: “The end-of-day Index price is calculated using the Bloomberg Crypto Price Fixings (‘CFIX’) mid-price for bitcoin. CFIX is based on pricing provided by the Bloomberg Generic Price (‘BGN’) using Bloomberg’s data, technology and …

India has been the subject of intense speculation regarding the future legal status of Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies in recent months. Speculation went into overdrive in February when an anonymous Indian minister told Bloomberg that a nationwide blanket ban on cryptocurrency was imminent and that holders would be given a matter of months to dispense with their coins and tokens. Fears were then allayed — somewhat — when finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman told CNBC that reports of a blanket ban on cryptocurrencies had been overstated, adding that any pending regulation would take a much more “calibrated” approach. Perhaps it …

The number of cryptocurrency holding disclosures in Russia has been on the rise over the past several months, according to a new report. Russian news agency Izvestia reports Thursday that Russians have been increasingly disclosing their income from crypto trading for tax purposes. The report cites data from consulting and law firms such as KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, FTL Advisers, as well as Moscow-based public policy think tank the Center for Strategic Research. “We’ve observed that Russian residents have started voluntarily disclosing income from operations with digital assets, mainly with cryptocurrency, in tax declarations,” FTL Advisers’ partner Maria Kukla said. She noted …

Indian multinational technology firm Tech Mahindra is developing a new stablecoin service targeting banks and financial institutions. The tech giant announced Monday that it has entered into an agreement with Dutch blockchain application incubator Quantoz to launch a “stablecoin-as-a-service” tool to reduce transaction costs and processing times. The new collaboration targets potential clients from the banking and financial sector as the United States’ Office of the Comptroller of the Currency officially allowed federally chartered U.S. banks to use public blockchains and stablecoins for settlements in January 2021. Rajesh Dhuddu, blockchain and cybersecurity leader at Tech Mahindra, said: “The recent OCC …

Officials in Singapore have issued a notice to would-be Bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrency investors, warning them of the dangers of engaging with such a volatile market. Notably, the warning comes just 48 hours after Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong had his likeness appropriated by a user on the BitClout social token platform, who used the PM’s name to sell tokens worth a near combined $10,000. On Tuesday, the chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, warned of the inherent risks involved in speculating in the cryptocurrency space, asserting that their value was not tied to any …

The Japanese central bank has launched a proof of concept for its central bank digital currency, according to an official announcement on Monday. Following initial preparations to test the technical feasibility of core CBDC functions and features in early 2021, the Bank of Japan is beginning CBDC testing in its first phase today. During this phase, the bank plans to develop a test environment for the CBDC system and conduct experiments on basic functions related to payment, issuance, distribution and redemption of a CBDC. According to the announcement, this phase is expected to have been completed by March 2022. The …

The United States government has increasingly stepped up its overwatch on crypto in recent years, although an outright ban on Bitcoin is now unlikely — at least according to Gemini CEO and co-founder Tyler Winklevoss. “I think, if we were back in 2013, this would be kind of an open question,” Winklevoss told podcaster Peter McCormack when asked about regulation and a Bitcoin (BTC) ban during a Friday episode of the What Bitcoin Did podcast: “I think that the U.S. will never outlaw Bitcoin. There’s too much precedent that’s been set in the courts. The Coinflip order, which was a …

The current acting director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, will bid farewell to the governing body in April. His replacement: Michael Mosier, Chainalysis’ former chief technical counsel. “Director Kenneth A. Blanco today announced several leadership changes impacting the bureau,” said a public statement from FinCEN on Friday, adding: “Director Blanco announced he will depart FinCEN on April 9, after serving as the organization’s director since December 2017. Michael Mosier, former FinCEN Deputy Director and current Counselor to the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, will return to FinCEN as Acting Director.” Blanco was the government agency’s eighth director. …

Yield vault protocol Yearn.finance has revealed today the details of “Coordinape,” a new platform for distributing the $40,000-per-month Yearn DAO community grants budget — just one initiative in a wider effort to further decentralize Yearn’s governance. Yearn founder Andre Cronje — who said in an interview with Cointelegraph that he no longer takes part in Yearn’s “day to day” development — revealed the program in a blog post this morning. Each Coordinape member will have a set quantity of “allocation points” which they can distribute to other members who they worked with during a given month. Members with the most …

John Glen, the United Kingdom's financial services minister, has said that stablecoins will be the main focus of the government’s crypto regulatory activity. Glen made delivered his comments while addressing a conference organized by City & Financial Global on Tuesday, Reuters reported. For Glen, the U.K.’s decision to prioritize stablecoins over regulating the broader financial market is due to fears of monopolies emerging in the market based on the limited number of participants offering fiat-pegged cryptocurrency payment services. “There is the potential for some firms to swiftly achieve dominance and crowd out other players, due to their ability to scale …