Two members of the United States Senate have called on the heads of federal financial regulators to address “ties between the banking industry and cryptocurrency firms” in the wake of FTX’s collapse. In letters dated Dec. 7 to Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation acting chair Martin Gruenberg, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Tina Smith — both on the Senate Banking Committee — acknowledged that the crypto industry was not so “deeply integrated” with traditional financial institutions to severely impact markets after FTX’s bankruptcy filing. However, the two lawmakers pointed …

A court in South Korea has supported the decision of local exchanges to delist Wemade’s Wemix (WEMIX) tokens, dismissing Wemade’s request to cancel the delisting. The Seoul Central District Court ruled on Dec. 7 to justify the decision of the Digital Asset eXchange Alliance (DAXA) to delist WEMIX from major South Korean exchanges, The Korea Herald reported on Thursday. The DAXA, a crypto exchange group representing South Korea’s largest firms like Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax, said that Wemade has failed to properly disclose the number of tokens outstanding. The court has reportedly supported the position of the DAXA, …

A United States financial regulator is looking to gain feedback from the banking industry about how decentralized finance (DeFi) may affect the bureau's efforts to stop financial crime. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) said it is “looking carefully” at DeFi, while the agency’s acting director, Himamauli Das, said the digital asset ecosystem and virtual currencies are a “key priority area” for the agency. Das gave prepared remarks on Dec. 6 at the American Bankers Association’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Conference. The acting director added the agency is “taking a close look” at its Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Combating the Financing …

A federal judge in California has dismissed a class action lawsuit against reality TV star Kim Kardashian, boxing champ Floyd Mayweather and the founders of EthereumMax, explaining that the submissions failed to meet the “heightened pleading standards” for fraud claims. The judge has, however, left room for the plaintiffs to refile the proposed class action lawsuit if certain provisions are amended. In the original Jan. 7 court filing submitted by Scott + Scott Attorneys At Law, the plaintiffs argued that Kardashian, Mayweather, and also former NBA superstar Paul Pierce didn’t disclose they were being paid to promote EthereumMax (EMAX). The …

The United States lawmakers have proposed an amendment to the State Department Basic Authorities Act of 1956 that includes information on crypto rewards and payouts. The proposed amendment under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) requires the Department of State, an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations, to inform about any crypto payouts or rewards within 15 days of making it. The NDAA is the name for each of a series of United States federal laws specifying the annual budget and expenditures of the U.S. Department of Defense. The official document …

The outgoing United States House Representative Madison Cawthorn has been fined over $15,000 by the House Committee on Ethics for his promotion of a cryptocurrency in which he had an undisclosed investment. A report released by the Committee on Dec. 6 after a seven-month-long investigation found Cawthorn “improperly promoted a cryptocurrency in which he had a financial interest” violating conflict of interest rules. Cawthorn’s “direct and unambiguous” promotional commentary on social media followed an undisclosed purchase by the Representative of $150,000 worth of the token in December 2021. He promoted the Ethereum-based token Let’s Go Brandon (LETSGO) — named after …

Fir Tree Capital Management has filed a lawsuit against Grayscale Investments demanding information that could be used to force changes to the way it runs its flagship Bitcoin Trust. According to Bloomberg, a Dec. 6 complaint was filed against Grayscale at the Delaware Court of Chancery and seeks to have Grayscale lower its fees, start redemptions and hand over documents relating to its relationship with the Digital Currency Group. The hedge fund also wants to stop Grayscale’s efforts in converting its $10.7 billion Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a spot exchange-traded fund (ETF). In its complaint, the New York-based hedge …

Former FTX chief executive officer Sam Bankman-Fried has reportedly hired Mark Cohen, a former federal prosecutor, to act as his defense attorney. According to a Dec. 6 report from Reuters, Bankman-Fried's spokesperson Mark Botnick said the former FTX CEO has retained Cohen amid a flurry of civil litigation from investors in the crypto exchange and investigations by lawmakers and regulators in the United States. Cohen, a co-founder of law firm Cohen & Gresser, was a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York who also on the defense team for the high-profile case involving Ghislaine Maxwell — …

News involving crypto and fraud is ubiquitous in the white-collar crime sphere and, perhaps more worryingly, these fraudulent activities in the crypto sector are not limited to a single type of crime. Diverse and distinct yet with one common thread, these crimes involve real money and crypto investors are the victims. Many people have placed their life savings into crypto and, on a larger scale, private equities, pension schemes and even nation-states are principal investors and losers. There are con artists who will try and entice their targets to invest in a get-rich scheme that turns out to be a …

The Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Paraguay's bicameral legislature, failed to move forward on a bill aimed at promoting crypto mining through the use of surplus electricity following a veto from President Mario Abdo Benítez. In a Dec. 5 session, members of Paraguay’s legislature discussed the pros and cons of incentivizing crypto miners to operate in the country with a cap on the electricity rates, but ultimately voted against amendments that would have effectively reversed a presidential veto. Lawmakers suggested a lack of regulation around crypto-related activities had led to events like the downfall of FTX, and highlighted …

The international monitoring body Financial Stability Board, or FSB, called for a global framework aimed at regulating and supervising crypto in the wake of FTX’s collapse, also saying it would assess vulnerabilities associated with decentralized finance. In a Dec. 6 meeting in Basel, the FSB said it planned to “enhance its crypto-assets monitoring framework” to include “DeFi-specific vulnerability indicators” as well as address the potential impact of having DeFi becoming more closely connected to traditional financial markets. According to the monitoring body, the financial stability risks from the crypto market were “limited” following FTX’s liquidity crisis and bankruptcy, but “growing …

One of the most powerful moments in a new crypto user’s journey happens the first time they send a sizable amount of money to their private wallet. It’s an awe-inspiring, serious moment — and it’s a little scary to experience the power and personal responsibility of the technology firsthand with your own real money. A second powerful moment occurs when the same user is introduced to a block explorer, looks up their address and sees that same transaction there on the blockchain for all to see. There are competing visions of what Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and other cryptocurrencies will …