Cryptocurrency Markets Reveal the Price of Political Patronage

By David Krause December 5, 2025 by renholding

In October 2025, Bitcoin experienced its largest single-day crash since the COVID-19 pandemic, a 20% decline that economist Paul Krugman attributed not to economic fundamentals but to threats against Donald Trump’s political standing. ¹ Krugman’s diagnosis was stark: Bitcoin had …

Davis Polk Discusses SEC’s Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit

By Greg D. Andres, Robert A. Cohen, Martine M. Beamon, Stefani Johnson Myrick and Fuad Rana March 13, 2025 by eorozco

Changes to the SEC’s specialized crypto enforcement unit signal a reduced focus on non-fraud crypto cases and increased prioritization of traditional cybersecurity issues, use of emerging technologies to defraud retail investors and crypto cases involving fraud.

On February 20, 2025, …

Wilson Sonsini Discusses the New SEC Crypto Task Force

By Amy Caiazza and Alice Cao March 12, 2025 by eorozco

The lead of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) new Crypto Task Force (Task Force), Commissioner Hester Peirce, recently laid out principles for how the Task Force will approach regulation and provided a roadmap for specific issues the Task …

White & Case Discusses SEC 2025 Priorities: AI, Cybersecurity, and Crypto

By Tami Stark and Claudette Druehl November 20, 2024 by eorozco

On October 21, 2024, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) Division of Examinations (“Examination Division”) announced its 2025 Examination Priorities (“Report”). Investment advisers and broker-dealers should ensure that policies, procedures and surveillance efforts related to these priorities address concerns …

Davis Polk Discusses Crypto Market Structure Bill in U.S. House

By Joseph A. Hall, Billy Hicks, Justin Levine, Gabe Rosenberg and Zachary J. Zweihorn May 30, 2024 by renholding

In an important step forward, the House voted to pass a bill to establish a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets and offering important protections for customers. It could be improved by expressly discarding Howey, Reves or similar inherently …

Regulating Crypto-Trading Platforms as Exchanges

By Marco Dell’Erba July 5, 2023 by renholding

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent actions against Binance and Coinbase show that the commission is worried about the business model of crypto-trading platforms. In its complaint against Binance, for example, the SEC expressed concerns about the offering of “three …

Decentralized Finance, Crypto Funds, and Value Creation in Tokenized Firms

By Paul P. Momtaz, Niclas Dombrowski, Wolfgang Drobetz and Douglas J. Cumming May 31, 2022 by renholding

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) employs blockchain technology and smart contracts with the goal of enabling perfectly disintermediated financial markets. Despite the far-reaching ambition, DeFi markets are experiencing increasing intermediation recently, as a new type of intermediary, so-called Crypto Funds (henceforth, CFs), …

Cleary Gottlieb Discusses SEC’s BlockFi Settlement and Crypto Lending

By Robin Bergen, David Lopez, Michael Mazzuchi, Tom Bednar and Tom Standifer March 2, 2022 by renholding

On February 14, 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced a settled enforcement action charging BlockFi Lending LLC (“BlockFi”) with allegedly failing to register its interest-bearing crypto lending product as a security, failing to register itself as an investment company, …

Davis Polk Discusses Tighter China Controls Over Crypto Transactions

By Martin Rogers, Jai R. Massari, Margaret E. Tahyar, Yuan Zheng and Zachary J. Zweihorn October 6, 2021 by renholding

The PRC appears to be further tightening controls on cryptocurrency activities. On September 24, 2021, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), China’s central bank, issued the Notice Regarding Further Prevention and Management of Risks Associated with Cryptocurrency Trading Hype (…

Latham & Watkins Discusses ESG Considerations for Cryptocurrency

By Paul A. Davies, Nicola Higgs, Yvette D. Valdez, Stephen P. Wink and Stuart Davis April 21, 2021 by Nisha Chandra

The huge rise in popularity of Bitcoin — and the growing interest by mainstream financial institutions in virtual assets as an investable and tradable asset class — has shone a light on the cryptocurrency industry’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) …

O’Melveny & Myers Discusses the SEC’s Most Recent No-Action Letter on Digital Assets

By Eric Sibbitt, Robert Plesnarski and Sydney Ryan December 7, 2020 by Nisha Chandra

On Wednesday, November 18, 2020, the staff of the Division of Corporation Finance (the “Division”) of the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC” or the “Commission”) took another step forward for crypto regulation by granting a no-action letter to IMVU, Inc. …

Libra: The Regulatory Challenges Facebook Ignored

By Georges Ugeux July 11, 2019 by renholding

The announcement on June 18 by Facebook of what it calls “a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people” was sure to receive immediate attention. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now on a global …

SEC Commissioner Peirce Talks Digital Assets: How We “Howey”

By Hester M. Peirce May 17, 2019 by renholding

One year ago, I gave a speech—appropriately in Southern California—called “Beaches and Bitcoin.”[1] At that time—not so long ago in analog time but eons ago in digital time—the burning question was how to decide when issuing tokens constituted an

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