How Investors React to SEC and CFTC Enforcement in Digital Asset Markets

By Yuliya Guseva and Irena Hutton November 17, 2023 by renholding

Digital assets and blockchains can lead to financial innovations with a range of applications across countries, markets, and industries. Yet they also require comprehensive regulation, which is especially difficult within the fragmented financial-regulation framework of the United States. In a …

SEC Announces Enforcement Results for Fiscal Year 2023

By Securities and Exchange Commission November 15, 2023 by renholding

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it filed 784 total enforcement actions in fiscal year 2023, a 3 percent increase over fiscal year 2022, including 501 original, or “stand-alone,” enforcement actions, an 8 percent increase over the prior fiscal …

Why the Major Questions Doctrine Does Not Cover SEC Crypto Lawsuits

By Todd Phillips and Beau Baumann September 14, 2023 by renholding

In West Virginia v. EPA, the Supreme Court expanded the reach of the major questions doctrine (MQD) by reframing it as a substantive canon and clear-statement rule rooted in both the Constitution’s separation of powers and “a practical understanding …

Skadden Discusses DOJ’s Reliance on Traditional Statutes in Cryptoasset Fraud Cases

By Alexander C. Drylewski, Stuart D. Levi, Daniel Michael and Spurthi Jonnalagadda August 3, 2023 by renholding

Two recent indictments highlight the Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) continuing use of the traditional wire fraud, money laundering and identity theft statutes to pursue fraud involving digital assets, indicating that law enforcement will look to prevent theft and scamming regardless …

Skadden Discusses New Senate Crypto Bill Limiting SEC Regulatory Role

By David Meister, Chad E. Silverman and Daniel Merzel July 25, 2023 by renholding

A bipartisan bill introduced in the U.S. Senate two weeks ago seeks “to bring crypto assets within the regulatory perimeter” by granting oversight responsibility to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for most forms of cryptocurrency.

The new bill, sponsored …

Skadden Discusses New EU and UK Regimes for Regulating Cryptoassets

By Simon Toms, Azad Ali, Eve-Christie Vermynck and David Y. Wang June 30, 2023 by renholding

The European Union and U.K. are establishing comprehensive regimes for the regulation of cryptoassets. The Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on June 9, 2023, and will come into force on …

Wachtell Lipton Discusses Congressional Bill Proposing Comprehensive Cryptoasset Legal Framework

By Kevin S. Schwartz, David M. Adlerstein and Samantha M. Altschuler June 16, 2023 by renholding

On June 2, the Chairs of the House Committees on Financial Services and Agriculture jointly released an ambitious discussion draft of new legislation aimed at filling the persistent gap in regulation of spot cryptoasset markets and to resolve lingering uncertainty…

Stocks, Memes, or Miles? A New Crypto Taxonomy and Regulatory Paradigm

By Lev Breydo June 14, 2023 by renholding

Crypto is at a crossroads. After a cascade of bankruptcies – including FTX’s implosion – millions of defrauded customers, and trillions of dollars in value destruction, many are wondering whether the sector has a future. Amidst the wreckage, after years …

Crypto and Forum Selection Clauses

By John Coyle April 5, 2023 by renholding

Over the past six months, the crypto industry has suffered setback after setback. In late 2022, the cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed. Its CEO and founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, has since been charged with wire fraud, money laundering, and securities fraud, …

Crypto Contagion: FTX, a Sector’s Crisis, and the Future of Digital Assets

By Lev Breydo March 28, 2023 by renholding

In just three years, crypto conglomerate FTX Group went from start-up to a $40 billion global phenomenon to a company in “free-fall” Chapter 11. The debacle has been most brutal for millions of FTX customers, who are living through the …

A Beginner’s Guide to the SBF Prosecution: Where the Legal Issues Lie

By John C. Coffee, Jr. December 21, 2022 by renholding

The spectacle of a shambling billionaire with an adolescent personality, an inconsistent memory, a fondness for using his depositors’ funds for his own personal purposes, and an eagerness to talk in self-destructive ways to the press has fascinated everyone. This …

Angels and Devils: The Early Crypto Entrepreneurs

By Darian Ibrahim December 8, 2022 by renholding

After the collapse of FTX and a summer of crypto failures (Terra Luna, Celsius, Three Arrows), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will want to act quickly and treat more digital assets as “securities.” But which ones? In a new …

Paul Hastings Discusses SEC’s Crypto Victory in the LBRY Case

By Kenneth Herzinger, Nick Morgan, Eric Sibbitt and Derek Evan Wetmore November 28, 2022 by renholding

On November 7, a federal judge ruled that LBRY Credits (“LBC”) are securities, and thus LBRY violated Section 5 of the Securities Act of 1933 by selling LBC.[1] LBRY responded with a tweet describing the ruling as “extraordinarily dangerous …

SEC Announces Enforcement Results for FY 2022

By Securities and Exchange Commission November 16, 2022 by renholding

The Securities and Exchange Commission today [November 15] announced that it filed 760 total enforcement actions in fiscal year 2022, a 9 percent increase over the prior year. These included 462 new, or “stand alone,” enforcement actions, a 6.5 percent …

SEC Enforcement Chief Speaks on the Need to Police Crypto

By Gurbir Grewal September 12, 2022 by renholding

This morning,[1] I’d like to return to a theme I’ve touched on repeatedly in speeches throughout my first year on the job, and that is the urgent need to restore trust in our institutions, government, and the legal and …

SEC Chair Gensler Speaks on Crypto and the Securities Laws

By Gary Gensler September 9, 2022 by renholding

Joseph Kennedy, the first Chairman of the SEC, had a saying: “No honest business need fear the SEC.”[1]

In the depths of the Great Depression, Congress and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (known for a slightly more famous quotation about

…

Davis Polk Discusses What’s Missing from Bipartisan Bills to Regulate Crypto

By Joseph A. Hall, Dan Gibbons, Gabriel D. Rosenberg and Zachary J. Zweihorn August 15, 2022 by renholding

In the last few weeks, two bills with the potential to bring needed regulatory certainty to the U.S. digital asset industry were introduced in the Senate with solid bipartisan backing.

In June, Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) …

Debevoise Discusses Key Questions Recent Crypto Bankruptcy Filings May Answer

By Sidney Levinson, Elie Worenklein, Lily D. Vo, Ezra Newman and Justice H. Walters July 20, 2022 by renholding

One of the key unresolved questions surrounding crypto-custodian bankruptcy proceedings under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code is whether or not digital assets that are held by a crypto exchange on behalf of platform users could be viewed as the exchange’s corporate …

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), …

SEC Chair Gensler Talks Security-Based Swaps Market to ISDA

By Gary Gensler May 12, 2022 by renholding

Thank you for the kind introduction. It’s good to be back with the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) again.

As is customary, I’d like to note that I’m not speaking on behalf of my fellow Commissioners or the SEC

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