An unprecedented year, 2020 has sent the global economy into a tailspin in an effort to compensate for COVID-19-related difficulties. If the traditional system collapses, Bitcoin will become vital, according to United States Senator-elect Cynthia Lummis. "If we reach the point where we have overspent so much that things start crashing down, the black swan event occurs with regard to any fiat currency — whether it’s ours or yours or China’s or Japan’s — that there is a backstop available to every government in the world, and that backstop is Bitcoin,” Lummis told Peter McCormack during a recent episode of …

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is trying to make heads or tails of the recent explosion in decentralized finance. On Monday, the CFTC’s Technology Advisory Committee hosted a presentation called “The Growth and Regulatory Challenges of Decentralized Finance” by law professor Aaron Wright and attorney Gary DeWaal. In large part, the presentation was a briefing on the operations of decentralized platforms like Uni, which have commanded a greater share of crypto trading and headlines since this summer. Wright summarized the advantages of DeFi as potentially providing services for lower cost to a greater number of people by virtue of automating …

Per a Dec. 11 announcement from the Department of Justice, Assistant Attorney General Beth Williams is out of the policy department Since 2017, Williams has been a leader at the Office of Legal Policy. Though the DoJ's announcement today explicitly says Williams is leaving the office rather than the department as a whole, it does not say where she is bound for next. As the announcement notes, Williams has been particularly involved in: "The department’s cyber policies, including coordinating the development of a recent white paper on cryptocurrency as part of the Cyber-Digital Task Force." This is in reference to …

The Swedish government is progressing with its central bank digital currency, or CBDC, by launching a formal review of a potential transition to the digital currency. According to a Bloomberg report published Friday, the review will explore the feasibility of moving the country's payments infrastructure to a digital currency. The country features one of the most cashless economies in the world. Sweden’s financial markets minister, Per Bolund, reportedly said that the government expects to complete the digital currency review by the end of November 2022. Anna Kinberg Batra — a former chairwoman of the finance committee at Sweden’s central bank, …

Russia is the latest country to officially require its government officials to report their cryptocurrency holdings. President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree obliging Russian officials to disclose their crypto investments by June 30, 2021, local news agency TASS reported on Dec. 10. Officially released on Thursday, the decree stipulates new measures related to Russia’s federal crypto law “On Digital and Financial Assets,” or DFA. The form requires officials to disclose data like the name of the digital asset, the date of acquisition, the total amount of held assets, as well as information about the issuer of an asset like …

In a public statement on Thursday, Chairman Heath Tarbert announced that he will be leaving the Commodity Futures Trading Commission early next year. In listing accomplishments over the course of his term, Tarbert included that "We have promoted responsible fintech innovation and declared Ether a commodity." This tracks with Tarbert's broader interest in the crypto markets and earlier statements affirming that Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) should not face regulation as securities. Tarbert, who joined the CFTC in 2019, has been a noted voice for sound crypto regulation at the federal level. He joins a laundry list of appointed regulators …

Jeremy Allaire, CEO and co-founder of peer-to-peer payments firm Circle, sent a letter to senior staff of the United States Department of the Treasury on Dec. 9, appealing for regulators to collaborate with the industry in adopting crypto regulations. Allaire warned U.S. regulators that some of its proposed rules pose a direct risk to the country’s competitiveness and could potentially trigger unintended consequences around crypto and blockchain-related use cases. The exec specifically referred to a new proposal to prohibit so-called unhosted or self-hosted wallets. Allaire argued that the proposal does not address actual risks in the industry: “I believe the …

Stablecoin creator and crypto services provider Paxos filed an application to open a national bank on Wednesday. If approved, the pioneering Paxos General Trust will be headquartered in New York, licensed to hold cryptocurrencies and execute the duties of a regular trust bank. According to a blog post on the Paxos website, being granted a national trust bank charter from the U.S. government would broaden both the range of services offered by the company and the geographic area to which it can offer services: “Our mission is to modernize financial market infrastructure and enable the movement of any asset, any …

Major cryptocurrency advocates in Russia are opposing the government’s stringent approach to regulating the crypto industry. The Committee on Blockchain Technologies and Cryptoeconomics, whose ranks include executives from major crypto exchanges Binance and OKEx, has called on the state to soften regulations that could potentially harm the crypto industry. The committee told Cointelegraph on Dec. 9 that its members have sent their feedback to the Ministry of Finance regarding a new bill on the taxation of digital currencies such as Bitcoin (BTC). The lobbyists proposed a number of measures like revoking criminal liability for crypto tax reporting failures and reducing …

A newly appointed official in Ukraine has officially declared his cryptocurrency holdings, including a significant amount of privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero (XMR). Rostyslav Solod, a 19-year-old deputy of the Kramatorsk regional department and the son of Ukrainian politicians Natalia Korolevska and Yuriy Solod, reported holdings of 185,000 XMR, worth about $24.5 million at publishing time. According to a declaration published on Dec. 2, Solod became the owner of this Monero fortune back in March 2015, when he was 14 years old. At the time, Monero was trading at around $0.50 per coin, meaning that the market price for this acquisition was …

Ryan Selkis, co-founder of data and research company Messari, recently released his 2021 crypto sector thesis, examining the state of the industry as well as forecasting what lies ahead. Selkis explains in this report that the U.S. government is one remaining adversary he feels BTC must win over. “The ‘final boss’ to beat is the state,” Selkis wrote in his report, released on Tuesday. “For the U.S., bitcoin presents a tool to undermine international sanctions, and 80% of mining capacity now sits behind enemy lines in China, Russia, and Iran,” he noted. “Will a Biden administration like BTC? TBD.” Bitcoin …

The public and private sectors should work closely together to bring about the future of money, according to a former leader of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Chris Giancarlo, a former CFTC chairman and initiator of a blockchain-based digital dollar project, joined the Singapore Fintech Festival 2020 to discuss the future of stablecoins and central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs. At a Tuesday panel called “Will CBDCs disrupt stablecoins?,” Giancarlo declared that the future of money depends on close government collaboration with the private sector. Addressing Iliana Oris Valiente’s question on the potential coexistence of the emerging rise of CBDCs …