Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law. Editor’s note The final scene of Animal Farm, Orwell’s classic fable of revolution gone wrong and a staple of secondary-school reading lists throughout the English-speaking world, features a card game. The pigs who run the farm with an iron hoof host the humans who have gone from enemies of the revolution to drinking buddies of the revolution’s leaders. The book ends with accusations of cheating and a metamorphosis realized. The pigs and the men look just the same. If you squint, …

China’s government-backed blockchain project, the Blockchain Service Network, has announced the integration of the Tezos blockchain onto its international portal. According to an official announcement on Sept. 24, Tezos has been selected as the “one of the first batch of blockchains” to be integrated into the BSN International — a global platform providing access to public chain services on the BSN. Due to the integration, developers worldwide can now access the Tezos protocol using BSN’s global public city nodes and portals. According to the BSN, there are three global public city nodes that have integrated with the Tezos blockchain in …

Authorities in Russia appear to be going after Binance — the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange — as its domain is now in the list of prohibited websites in the country. On Sept. 24, Binance officially announced on its Russian Telegram channel that Russian telecom regulator Roskomnadzor has added the website to the register of platforms disseminating prohibited information. According to the announcement, Binance has been placed in the list due to distribution of data related to the acquisition of digital currencies like Bitcoin (BTC). Gleb Kostarev, Binance’s head of operations for Russia and the CIS, told Cointelegraph that the exchange …

Major Indian cryptocurrency exchange BuyUCoin has developed a framework to regulate cryptocurrency in India that it claims has the support of “all the Indian cryptocurrency stakeholders”. However, it is not clear yet which stakeholders helped develop the framework, or ‘sandbox’, which will be officially released on October 2. BuyUCoin, which has more than 350,000 users and handles billion-dollar transactions, described the framework as a draft set of community driven rules, propositions and implementation methods. The framework will be presented to the Indian Government. It comes after the Indian Supreme Court in March struck down the Reserve Bank of India's circular …

A recent YouTube webinar from the Ministry of Justice and Public Security hosted discussion on blockchain's usefulness in several categories, including the fight against corruption. Blockchain's impact on COVID-19 tracing also surfaced during the discussion. A report from Reuters at the beginning of September clarified that the country is not likely to push a mandatory vaccine, while Sept. 9 news reported by MercoPress estimated a 2021 debut date for a COVID-19 shot in the country. Brazil now plans to use a blockchain-based system called the National Health Data Network, or RNDS. Constructed using the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain framework, the system …

Conflux Network, a permissionless blockchain project which is endorsed by the Chinese state, told Cointelegraph on Sept. 22 that the project has officially launched its Tree Graph Research Institute with the Shanghai government. According to Fan Long, Founder of Conflux and Director of the TreeGraph Research Institute, the Tree-Graph Blockchain Research Institute will experiment with local states to build a regulatory compliance platform that can bridge global DeFi applications and government regulations. He added that: “DeFi is a new world and while it appears as though it may pose a challenge for regulators, they appear willing to listen. At this …

Two major crypto bills were introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday. One aims to establish which cryptocurrencies are securities. The other looks to put regulation of exchanges in the hands of the country's commodities regulator. The securities bill The Securities Clarity Act, from the office of Representative Tom Emmer (R-MN) establishes a new distinction in securities law between an investment contract and the "an asset sold pursuant to an investment 22 contract, whether tangible or intangible (including an 23 asset in digital form)." The new bill is basically a direct response to recent controversy over the Simple …

In a virtual fireside chat with the D.C. Bar, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce criticized the commission’s long-standing resistance to a Bitcoin ETF. Moderator Ashley Ebersole asked about the SEC’s highly public dissatisfaction with a long series of Bitcoin ETF proposals in the U.S. Peirce, who is often known as "CryptoMom," responded with opposition to those rejects: “I’ve been pretty outspoken about my disagreement with my colleagues on disapproving some of these exchange-traded products.” Bitcoin is not uniquely volatile as a base investment for an exchange-traded fund, Peirce argued. “I would like us to look at how we’ve looked at similar …

Russia’s Ministry of Finance is continuing to push regulations for the cryptocurrency industry by proposing new tax requirements. The ministry now reportedly wants to introduce criminal liability for failure to declare taxes on crypto, including prison terms of up to three years. According to a Sept. 24 report by Kommersant, the ministry proposes that individuals who fail to report an amount of over 1 million Russian rubles ($13,000) in annual crypto operations should serve a three-year prison term or hard labor. The ministry also proposed major fines for smaller unreported amounts. As such, any physical or legal entity in Russia …

The government of Colombia has approved on September 22 a pilot program that calls companies to test crypto transactions until December 31 within the regulatory sandbox just passed by the country’s financial watchdog. During a panel titled “Overview of the Regulation of Crypto Assets in Colombia,” Jorge Castaño, head of Colombia’s Financial Superintendence (SFC), revealed that companies wishing to trial crypto transactions should apply by the end of the year, as the pilot will run in 2021. The new regulatory sandbox was approved by the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit on September 14. The SFC elaborated on the sandbox: …

Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov, addressing the higher chamber of the Russian parliament on Wednesday, named blockchain as one of the technologies that the government will prioritize in the near future. Belousov said that the government will support technologies that facilitate the interactions between the state and the largest corporations. In addition to blockchain, he named a number of other key technologies: artificial intelligence, quantum computing, new materials, quantum sensing, microelectronics, Internet of Things, 5G, quantum communications and energy. Belousov also said that in order to foster the development of these technologies, the government would have to create …

On Wednesday, the Chamber of Digital Commerce announced the addition of Visa, Goldman Sachs and Six Digital Exchange (SDX) to its executive committee. Mick Mulvaney, a former White House Chief of Staff and a co-founder of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus will also be joining the chamber’s board of advisors. Mulvaney left the White House in March. On the board, he will be joining a number of figures familiar to Cointelegraph’s readers, including Don Tapscott of the Blockchain Research Institute and former CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo, who is now with the Digital Dollar Project. Regarding the lineup of the advisory board, …