Elizabeth Warren calls out crypto’s Washington revolving door
Senator Elizabeth Warren has a new target as she takes on the cryptocurrency industry: Its growing army of former defense, national security and law enforcement officials.
The Massachusetts Democrat sent letters to Coinbase, the Blockchain Association and Coin Center, two leading industry groups, demanding details on their employment of the former officials.
Warren cited POLITICO reporting that outlined how the crypto lobby has been flexing its association with the experts as it faces growing scrutiny for the role digital assets play in facilitating financial crime, including funding the Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7.
Source: MSN
Binance to pay $2.7 billion in settlement deal With CFTC
A US court approved a settlement deal between Binance and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that involves a payment of $2.7 billion by the exchange and a $150 million fine for co-founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ).
The regulator said in a press release from December 18 that Binance and CZ ”chose to ignore” US laws and solicited customers in the country at Zhao’s direction.
The world’s biggest crypto exchange was fined $1.35 billion and also ordered to “disgorge another $1.35 billion of ill-gotten transaction fees.”
Source: InsideBitcoins
Bitcoin rises on blank meeting between SEC and BlackRock
Bitcoin rose to above $44,000 following the revelation that BlackRock and the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) met on Tuesday.
That’s just one day after BlackRock filed an amendment to the bitcoin spot ETF that ditched in-kind redemption for cash issuance and redemption.
It’s unclear why they met on Tuesday. A memo just says:
“The discussion concerned The NASDAQ Stock Market’s proposed rule change to list and trade shares of the iShares Bitcoin Trust under NASDAQ Rule 5711(d).”
That contrasts with previous meetings that had flow charts and many more words. So was this just the final meeting where, to caricature it, BlackRock said: are we all good now? And SEC said: Yes?
Source: TrustNodes