Regulation

Former FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried watched from the defense table as his former business associate and girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, testified at his criminal trial. According to reports from the courtroom on Oct. 10, Ellison admitted to fraud during her time at Alameda under Bankman-Fried’s direction. The former Alameda CEO reportedly placed the blame for

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) of the United Kingdom has placed restrictions on peer-to-peer lending platform Rebuildingsociety, the firm with which crypto exchange Binance partnered for compliance with the regulator’s marketing regime.  In an Oct. 10 notice, the FCA said Rebuildingsociety was not authorized to “approve the content of any financial promotion for a Qualifying

Crypto exchange Binance has frozen accounts linked to Hamas militants as per requests from Israeli law enforcement. According to an October 10 WeChat post by Yi He, the exchange’s co-founder, the freeze is targeted towards Hamas and not the people of Palestine. As narrated by He: “Hamas is a designated terrorist organization by the United

Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation presented its regulatory roadmap for artificial intelligence (AI) on Oct. 7. The roadmap was published on the ministry’s website and states that it aims to help local companies prepare for adopting a law analogous to the European Union’s AI Act. It also seeks to educate citizens on protecting themselves from AI

Representatives in the European Union are reportedly negotiating a plan for additional regulations on the largest artificial intelligence (AI) systems, according to a report from Bloomberg.  The European Commission, European Parliament and the various EU member states are said to be in discussions regarding the potential effects of large language models (LLMs), including Meta’s Llama

The astrology-themed nonfungible token (NFT) project Lucky Star Currency (LSC) has performed an exit scam for over $1 million, according to an Oct. 9 report from blockchain security firm CertiK. The project’s deployer account called the “withdrawToken” function on both the NFTMerge and AdwardCenter contracts, removing over $1 million in LSC from them. These tokens

On Oct. 3, United States District Court Judge Analisa Torres rejected the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) motion to appeal its loss against Ripple Labs, the company behind the XRP (XRP) cryptocurrency. Torres denied the SEC’s motion, claiming the regulator failed to meet the burden to show that there were controlling questions of law

The Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CVM) of Brazil is planning to start a second regulatory sandbox program in 2024. Speaking at Rio Innovation Week on Oct. 4, the superintendent of institutional investor supervision with the CVM, Daniel Maeda, said the regulator will be exploring a regulatory sandbox for use cases of tokenization, potentially starting in

Pro-crypto candidate for the United States presidency Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., often known simply as RFK Jr., announced on Oct. 9 at a rally in Philadelphia that he was dropping his bid for nomination in the Democratic primary to run as an independent instead. “I’m here to declare myself an independent candidate,” he said. Kennedy

Hong Kong’s police force has raised the alarm after 11 Hong Kong-based Binance customers were targeted in a wave of phishing scams sent through text messages. Hong Kong police warned users of the scam in an Oct. 9 post to its Facebook page dubbed “CyberDefender.” “Recently, fraudsters posing as Binance sent text messages claiming that

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has likened former FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried to infamous American fraudster Bernie Madoff and accused the media of giving the former FTX CEO a “free pass.” Bernard Lawrence Madoff was the mastermind behind the largest known Ponzi scam in history, estimated to be worth $64.8 billion. At one point, Madoff served

One of the friendliest European jurisdictions to crypto, Cyprus, might bring its industry regulation to tighter standards. According to an Oct. 10 report by the Cyprus Mail, the local Ministry of Finance intends to amend the existing Prevention and Suppression of Money Laundering Law.  The ministry has presented its amendments package to the Parliamentary Committee

Sam Bankman-Fried’s legal team is looking for permission to probe the alleged involvement of FTX lawyers in the issuance of $200 million worth of loans from Alameda that were approved by Gary Wang. As previously reported in the build-up to the highly anticipated trial, an Oct. 1 court ruling provisionally barred Bankman-Fried from apportioning blame

The top United States agency for consumer financial protection is considering applying the Electronic Fund Transfer Act (EFTA) to crypto, in an attempt to protect consumers from fraudulent crypto transfers. Speaking at an Oct. 6 payments conference by the Brookings Institution think tank, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) director Rohit Chopra said his agency is

Crypto exchange FTX used hidden Python code to misrepresent the value of its insurance fund — a pool of funds meant to prevent user losses during huge liquidation events — according to testimony from FTX co-founder Gary Wang.  In a damning new testimony on Oct. 6, FTX’s former chief technology officer, Gary Wang, said that

On Friday, Oct. 6, two senior Republican members of the United States House of Representatives urged the Biden administration to strengthen the enforcement of export controls on advanced semiconductors to China. In a letter addressed to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Representative Mike Gallagher, chairman of

Gary Wang, FTX’s co-founder and former chief technology officer, again appeared in court on the fourth day of the criminal trial of former CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried to speak on the connections between the crypto exchange and Alameda Research. According to reports from Inner City Press, Wang returned to a New York courtroom on Oct.

Officials at the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) were reportedly considering an enforcement action against Stephen Ehrlich, the former CEO of crypto lending firm Voyager Digital. According to an Oct. 6 Bloomberg report, CFTC staff were considering taking action against Ehrlich following an investigation concluding the former CEO violated U.S. derivatives regulations prior

The fallout from the banking crisis earlier this year continues as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision considers requiring banks to disclose their crypto asset holdings. The committee, which operates under the aegis of the Bank for International Settlements, identified holding crypto as one of the factors that led to the demise of several banks

Lawmakers in Taiwan are reportedly aiming to push out a first draft of a special law by the end of November 2023, according to a report from the Block.  Yung-Chang Chiang, an official in the Legislative Yuan of Taiwan, said in an interview that he intends for the first draft to be available for reading