In its finalized strategy for the next four years, released on July 8, the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission has made comprehensive crypto regulation a priority. New strategy promises to embrace innovation “We will develop a holistic framework to promote responsible innovation in digital assets,” the new framework promises within its strategic objectives. The new framework puts out goals for the next four years, up until 2024, which is when current Chairman Heath Tarbert’s term is scheduled to end. The broad strategy includes heavily pro-innovation language, for which Tarbert and predecessors at the CFTC are well-known in the crypto …

In a July 7 interview with predecessor Jim Newsome, current Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Heath Tarbert ran down a list of pending concerns standing between cryptocurrencies and the long-awaited promised land of regulatory clarity. Securities regulation and the CFTC’s purview Tarbert was careful to outline the distinction between the work of the CFTC and its elder brother regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. The determination of whether a digital asset is a security is “the sole province of the SEC,” Tarbert explained. “If their determination is that it’s not a security then we can …

The enfant terrible of the digital token world, the Simple Agreement for Future Tokens, or SAFT, continues to grab headlines. In the recent Telegram case, the federal district court for the Southern District of New York enjoined Telegram Group Inc. from proceeding with its long-planned token generation event, finding not only that the issuance of their tokens, Telegram Open Network, would violate the registration requirements of the Securities Act of 1933 but that the initial placement of SAFTs constituted an illegal unregistered offering of securities. On June 26, 2020, the court approved a settlement between the United States Securities and …

In recent months, a number of class-action lawsuits have been filed against Ripple for selling its XRP token in an unregistered securities offering. So far, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has not published any official statement on this, which has kept everyone guessing. To help put an end to the uncertainty, Chris Giancarlo, former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, published a paper last week arguing that Ripple’s XRP is not a security. Giancarlo is famous for helping establish the CFTC’s stance that Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) are not securities. So, it would seem that he …

Sri Lanka’s central bank has selected a shortlist of three firms to develop a proof-of-concept (PoC) for a shared Know Your Customer (KYC) facility using blockchain. The project was initiated in fall 2019, according to a report from Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror on July 2. The central bank is looking to establish a blockchain-based facility that would enable the government and the banking sector to securely share and update customer data nationwide. Speaking at an event in Colombo on June 30, D. Kumaratunge — the central bank’s director of payments and settlements — told attendees, “We invited software companies to …

Editor’s note: The week has been remarkably active for policy, possibly as a result of economies showing signs of heading slowly back to normal. While crisis remains, it seems like everyone has gotten numb to crisis mode. Recent news has been quite kind to crypto all over the world. We may in fact be seeing a trend that many predicted back in March when COVID-19 lockdowns first took hold. Beyond the immediate importance that a disease that can be transmitted by cash gave to digital payments — or even the need to send money to hundreds of millions of people …

Former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Chris Giancarlo, published an opinion on June 17 arguing that XRP does not fulfil the criteria to be considered a security according to the Howey Test. Giancarlo left the CFTC in April 2019, and he is no longer in charge of making such decisions. Perhaps even more questionably, he is now financially linked to Ripple, the biggest holder of XRP tokens. “XRP is not a security” So says Giancarlo, who is also known as “Crypto Dad.” He was the one who got Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) declared commodities in the first place, …

In a framework published in the Harvard Business Law Review on June 15, Heath Tarbert, Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, broadly advocated financial regulation based on broader principles rather than specific rules. The argument for principles The argument for principles is that the approach entails less red tape and, ideally, encourages innovation. Tarbert voiced a desire to see the CFTC “stay ahead of the curve by reacting more quickly to changes in technology and the marketplace.” Tarbert wrote that in addition to promoting flexibility and innovation, “Principles-based regulation also discourages ‘loophole’ behavior and ‘checklist’ style approaches to compliance …

On May 28, the Digital Dollar Project released its white paper, a 30-page document detailing the potential applications of a CBDC. The white paper continues the nascent think tank’s work to push forward development of a digital dollar. The project and the tenets of the new white paper The paper details certain core tenets of what it considers a digital dollar and what it will push forward. The Digital Dollar Project was founded by former leaders of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and professional services company Accenture. One of those founders is Daniel Gorfine, the head of the CFTC’s fintech …

As announced on May 19, Swiss cryptocurrency exchange Lykke will be offering four prizes totalling 200,000 Swiss Francs ($205,800) as part of the Open Initiative. The initiative is looking for new proposals from developer teams for blockchain-based solutions to problems linked to current economic turmoil, divided into four categories. The jury and the categories for tech Judging the contest will be Lykke CEO Richard Olsen, former CFTC Chairman Christopher Giancarlo, and Ashkan Nikeghbali, a professor at the University of Zurich. Giancarlo is also serving as a strategic advisor to the Open Initiative. The four categories are blockchain-backed platforms for digital …

Crypto industry leaders and law experts debated the privacy implications of central bank digital currencies, known as CBDCs, during the "Money Re-Imagined" panel as part of Consensus:Distributed on Monday. Lawrence Summers, the former United States treasury secretary and former chief economist of the World Bank, argued that the current fiat monetary system exhibits issues of too much privacy, advancing that a CBDC should seek to facilitate greater oversight capabilities. The current monetary system has "too much privacy" Summers argued that supporting the anonymous movement of multimillion-dollar sums of money should not be an objective of financial policy: “Of all of …

As part of the virtual conference Consensus 2020, three leaders of the Digital Dollar Project held an "ask me anything" session on Monday in which they went at length into their thoughts on the future of money in the United States. The speakers and the project The AMA featured J. Christopher Giancarlo and Daniel Gorfine, the former chairman of and the former head of the financial technology wing at the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission, respectively. The two spoke to Cointelegraph at the end of March as lawmakers began looking at a digital currency to distribute COVID-19 stimulus funds. Today’s …