According to The Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei), one of the world's largest financial newspapers and the entity behind the Nikkei 225 stock index, Japan's Financial Services Agency, or FSA, will propose legislation next year restricting stablecoin issuance to only bank and wire transfer companies. Theoretically, this would prevent entities such as Tether (USDT), which does not operate as a bank and is only regulated in the British Virgin Islands, from conducting business with Japanese customers. However, the new proposed rules would only affect some stablecoin issuers. For example, USD Coin (USDC) issuer Circle plans to become a crypto bank chartered …

With the market capitalization of digital currencies surpassing $2 trillion, there is now record interest in crypto philanthropy. From helping to build a school in Uganda to fundraising for frontline healthcare workers and raising awareness for artists with intellectual disabilities, many nonprofit projects are gaining traction with generous assistance from crypto enthusiasts. But the rewards of giving crypto to charities aren’t limited to the feeling of having accomplished an altruistic task. The Internal Revenue Service currently classifies crypto as capital assets, like stocks. That means an investor can deduct the full market value of the cryptocurrency at the time of …

Singapore-headquartered digital asset platform, Bitget, has reportedly been suspended by the Monetary Authority of Singapore after getting into a dispute with an agency for the popular K-Pop boy band BTS. As reported by the Financial Times on Dec. 5, Bitget lost the Singapore license following the controversial listing of a new K-Pop-related cryptocurrency called Army Coin. However, the crypto exchange still claims to have licenses in other jurisdictions such as Australia, Canada, and the United States. The issue arose on Oct. 25, when the Bitget exchange shared a tweet promoting Army Coin, which is named after the South Korean boyband's …

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (H.R. 3684) put crypto in the crosshairs, where Congress and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) hope to scoop up enormous tax dollars. This reporting regime is projected to rake in an astounding $28 billion over the next ten years. No other provision in this massive recently enacted federal law is supposed to produce tax dollars that are even close. If you don’t think that means the IRS is coming for your crypto in a very big way and that Congress is trying hard to facilitate it, think again. The crypto community was outraged when …

Back in August, there were some dire warnings about what the Biden Administration’s proposed infrastructure bill might do to the cryptocurrency and blockchain sector by driving crypto miners out of the United States, crippling America's leadership role, etc. In response, the crypto industry mobilized a full-court-lobbying press on lawmakers. However, it was too late to excise the troubling digital-asset language, and, in November, the infrastructure bill was signed into law. The good news is that the infrastructure law won’t take effect until January 2024, which allows lots of time to patch up its shortcomings. The downside is that its worrisome …

The White House has reportedly begun interviews for possible candidates to fill the empty seats on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in 2022. According to a Wednesday report from Bloomberg citing people familiar with the matter, U.S. President Joe Biden is considering qualified candidates including Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Raphael Bostic, former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Richard Cordray, and Duke University law professor Sarah Bloom Raskin to take over positions from Fed board members leaving in early 2022. Others under consideration reportedly include a former Treasury Department official under President Barack Obama, Karen …

On Tuesday, Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, voiced his criticism regarding the state of the criticism sector at the "Russian Calling" investment forum in Moscow. According to local news outlet lenta.ru, the president made the following remarks, as translated by Cointelegraph: "It is not backed by anything, [and] the volatility is colossal, so the risks are very high. We also believe that we need to listen to those who talk about those high risks." Putin called for the greater monitoring and regulation of cryptocurrencies and pointed out that certain countries worldwide are seeing significant adoption of digital currencies. …

The use of cryptocurrencies to evade international sanctions from various international governmental organizations like the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, among others, has been a concern for regulators ever since the creation of cryptocurrencies. The rapidly increasing adoption of digital currencies in the last two years makes this discussion more important than ever, especially with the advent of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) like the digital yuan. In an interview on Nov.17, United States Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said that the efficacy of U.S. sanctions would not be undermined by central bank …

Are big emerging economies more likely to gravitate toward blanket crypto bans? China has set a precedent, and now it appears as if India could be weighing a similar policy direction: A bill containing a proposed ban on all “private cryptocurrencies” will go in front of the nation’s parliament sometime this winter. The measure is designed to clear the way for India’s central bank to advance its digital currency agenda. Whether a sovereign central bank digital currency can coexist with a thriving market of “private” cryptos will be one of the central questions of the looming CBDC age, and it …

There is no denying the fact that the crypto market has grown from strength to strength over the course of 2021, as is best highlighted by the total capitalization of the industry recently hitting the $3-trillion mark, albeit for a relatively brief period of time. That said, stablecoins, a class of cryptos that have their value pegged to a fiat currency, have seen their usage increase dramatically in recent months thanks, in large part, to their ability to help investors get their feet wet with digital currencies while eliminating many of the core issues — such as daily price volatility …

The U.K. Law Commission, tasked with monitoring the laws in the United Kingdom and recommending reforms, has said England and Wales do not need statutory law reform for smart legal contracts in the digital asset space. In a Nov. 25 announcement, the commission said smart contracts built using distributed ledger technology are permissible within England’s and Wales’ current legal framework. The Law Commission recommended only “an incremental development of the common law” as needed for existing frameworks, but also encouraged any parties to smart contracts to explain risks relating to “the performance of the code” and any other necessary terms. …

Hot on the heels of the rising cryptocurrency hype, Finnish regulators have dropped a formal notice. On Nov. 24th, the Financial Supervisory Authority (FIN-FSA) stated: “Only registered virtual currency providers can market virtual currencies and related services in Finland. The marketing of virtual currencies in Finnish and in Finland is only allowed for entities registered as virtual currency providers in Finland.” Finland is a highly economically free country, ranking 17th in the Index for Economic Freedom. However, as LocalBitcoins CEO Sebastian Sonntag told Cointelegraph upon receiving their FSA license in 2019: “The controls in the financial sector are of particularly …