A district court in Beijing has rejected monetary compensation in a Bitcoin (BTC) mining contract plea against a blockchain company. The Chaoyang District People’s Court on Wednesday deemed the Bitcoin mining contract between the plaintiff and the blockchain firm “invalid,” the South China Morning Post reported on Dec. 16. The plaintiff in the case reportedly paid 10 million yuan ($1.6 million) to the blockchain firm for deployment of mining machines, but incurred losses on his investment. The Beiijng based plaintiff claimed he earned only 18.5 Bitcoin on his investment and demanded an additional 217.17 BTC in compensation for his losses. …

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators have called on Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to clarify the language in the infrastructure bill signed into law by President Joe Biden around the tax reporting requirements on crypto. In a Tuesday letter, Senators Rob Portman, Mike Crapo, Pat Toomey, Mark Warner, Kyrsten Sinema, and Cynthia Lummis urged Yellen to “provide information or informal guidance” on the definition of “broker” in the recently passed infrastructure law, HR 3684. Under the current wording, people in the crypto space including miners, software developers, transaction validators and node operators are required to report most digital asset transactions …

The biggest regulatory story of the week was a United States House Committee on Financial Services hearing squarely focused on crypto. Even the event’s title — “Digital Assets and the Future of Finance: Understanding the Challenges and Benefits of Financial Innovation in the United States” — conveyed a different vibe than countless previous Congressional meetings that had been first and foremost about investor protection or security risks or threats to financial stability. Judging from reactions from many industry participants and experts, the exchange has been received as an overwhelming net positive, with legislators asking informed questions and otherwise acting like …

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) released its long-awaited guidance on virtual assets, laying out standards that have the potential to reshape the crypto industry in the United States and around the world. The guidance addresses one of the most important challenges for the crypto industry: To convince regulators, legislators and the public that it does not facilitate money laundering. The guidance is particularly concerned with the parts of the crypto industry that have recently brought about significant regulatory uncertainty including decentralized finance (DeFi), stablecoins and nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The guidance largely follows the emerging approach of U.S. regulators toward …

On Friday, Virtue Gaming, a decentralized online poker platform built on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain, launched the first play-to-earn digital poker casino in the United States. In the U.S., only six states (Nevada, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Michigan) have legalized and currently regulate online poker. The country has been slow to act on the subject due to concerns that international poker platforms would take revenue away from domestic, land-based gambling venues. Moreover, even in the said states, poker platforms must obtain licenses from each individual jurisdiction to operate. As a result, U.S. residents typically cannot access popular …

Growing inflation has become a mounting concern for nations around the world, especially the United States. The U.S. has seen one of the sharpest rises in consumer inflation over the past year. Lawmakers around the globe have claimed that they didn’t see the inflation coming, but people often draw their attention towards the seeming unrestricted money printing spree throughout the pandemic. The U.S. has printed 35% of the total U.S. dollar in circulation in 2021 alone which has played a key factor in record-breaking inflation. Market pundits expect a 6% rise in the consumer price index (CPI) in November, which …

Members of Parliament (MPs) in the United Kingdom have called upon the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to limit the use of the word “invest” and “investment” by cryptocurrency firms for promotional purposes. According to a Dec. 9 report in The Times, MPs at the treasury select committee told FCA chief Nikhil Rathi that the use of the word “your investment” often portrays that these are on par with an FTSE 100 company or a unit trust, thus giving the wrong impression about the type of investment. Harriett Baldwin, Conservative MP for West Worcestershire took special exception to FCA’s supposed inability …

The Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), a non-government trade association and advocacy group, has proposed to treat cryptocurrencies as securities of a special class. The trade association released a report titled “Cryptocurrencies, Crypto Tokens/Assets & Regulations: The Way Forward” where it advocates for regulating the crypto market instead of outlawing it, reported Business Line. The report highlighted substantial technological innovation that the core technology of blockchain can bring in the payment and remittance sector. The report proposes to formulate new regulations around the nascent crypto market instead of regulating them under existing securities law. “A new set of regulations appropriate …

Following another corruption scandal, the government of Puerto Rico is reportedly seeking to improve its anti-corruption efforts by adopting blockchain technology. Puerto Rican House Speaker Rafael “Tatito” Hernandez announced that lawmakers will hold meetings with local blockchain enthusiasts this month to discuss the potential adoption of blockchain technology to reduce corruption. The implementation of blockchain and smart contracts could bring more transparency and accountability to the public sector, the official said at a Puerto Rico Blockchain Trade Association conference, Bloomberg reported on Dec. 6. “We have a real credibility problem and this might be part of the solution,” Hernandez said, …

On Wednesday, Nikhil Rathi, CEO of the United Kingdom's Financial Conduct Authority, or FCA, issued the following statement to the Treasury Committee when asked about the risks of the much-unregulated cryptocurrency sector in the country: When we talk about the compensation scheme, we have to draw some pretty clear lines. I would suggest anything is crypto-related should not be entitled to compensations, and consumers should be clear about that when investing. In the passage, Rathi refers to the FCA's Financial Services Compensation Scheme, or FSCS, which pays out compensation to consumers when certain authorized financial institutions cannot meet claims against …

On Tuesday, BloombergQuint (Bloomberg India) reported that the penalty for non-compliance with the Indian government's crypto policies could range from a maximum fine of 20 crore rupees ($2.7 million USD) or 1.5 years in jail. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will likely give cryptocurrency investors a deadline to comply with new rules and declare their assets. Whilst the regulatory environment in the country holds a high degree of uncertainty, reports have indicated that investors' crypto must be soon be held in exchanges operating under the oversight of the Securities and Exchange Board of India, or SEBI. This would mean that private …

There’s no denying that the Indian government shares a contentious relationship with cryptocurrencies, as was made clear recently when the government indicated that it plans on banning all private cryptocurrencies — a list that could potentially include just about every digital asset in the market today — after it had previously lifted all such restrictions back in 2019. To elaborate, it is expected that as the government reconvenes for its Winter Session, it will discuss the Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2021, which as the name suggests, seeks to create a legislative framework wherein all private cryptocurrencies …