Andrew Joseph Shipe

Arnold & Porter Discusses Regulators’ Clamp-Down on ICOs, Virtual Currencies, and Blockchain Firms

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If there was ever a regulatory grace period for virtual currencies and blockchain technology, it is officially over.  Five federal regulators—The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network of the US Treasury Department (FinCEN), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)— all recently issued statements or took actions in which they clarified their positions on the scope of their jurisdiction over multiple aspects of virtual currency and certain types of blockchain enterprises.  State, foreign and multilateral regulators have also taken actions to rein in virtual … Read more

Arnold & Porter explains US Policy Developments in FinTech and Payments Systems: Federal Reserve Establishes Tasks Forces of Faster Payments and Secure Payments

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FinTech businesses focused on payments systems and foreign exchange have witnessed an explosion of demand in recent years. As these payment systems services continue to gain mainstream acceptance, financial regulators in the US are increasingly interested in monitoring and, as appropriate, prescribing policies or regulations concerning them, slowly casting a prudential regulatory framework over the FinTech payments systems industry.[1] The policy and regulatory landscape in this area is undergoing fundamental change.

Background

Regulation of the US payment system is highly fragmented and often ad hoc. In the foreign exchange sector, for instance, the appropriate regulator and the nature of the … Read more