The European Commission announced the launch of the European Blockchain Regulatory Sandbox on Feb. 15. The sandbox will provide a space for regulatory dialog for 20 projects per year through 2026. The sandbox was first announced in 2020 and is being facilitated by a number of private firms that won tenders in 2022. Funding will come from the Digital Europe Programme. Projects will be chosen by an independent panel of academic experts on a competitive basis from public and private sector use cases of “Blockchain and other Distributed Ledger Technologies.” Public sector projects on the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) …

Lawmakers in the Kansas House of Representatives have introduced a bill proposing to amend the legislature’s rules on political campaign donations. According to the bill, no person would be allowed to make or accept crypto contributions of more than $100 for any political candidate in the state’s primary or general election. For donations under $100, the receiver would need to “immediately convert” the crypto to U.S. dollars, not use the crypto for expenditures, and not HODL the funds. The proposed bill included provisions that seemed to be aimed at mitigating foreign contributions to elections in Kansas, by requiring personal information …

Judge John Dorsey of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware has denied a motion appointing an independent examiner for FTX. In a Feb. 15 hearing, Judge Dorsey said he had some discretion under the law to choose whether to appoint an examiner in the FTX bankruptcy case despite some of the the parties meeting the debt threshold with the loss of funds. According to the judge, appointing an examiner would be an “unnecessary burden” on FTX’s debtors and creditors. He also cited CEO John Ray’s experience under similar circumstances. “There’s no question that if an examiner …

South Korean prosecutors have requested an arrest warrant for the former CEO of Tmon, a Korean e-commerce platform, after taking billions of won in LUNA (LUNA), now known as LUNA Classic (LUNC), for promoting Terra as a simple payment gateway. Seoul prosecutors requested an arrest warrant on the former CEO of ecommerce giant Tmon for allegedly receiving bribery from Terra cofounder Daniel Shin in exchange for promoting Terra as a payment method, the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors Office confirmed with me via text. — Danny Kunwoong Park (@ParkKunwoong) February 15, 2023 Media outlet Dong-A Ilbo reported that the head of …

As reported by a local publication on Feb. 15, Korean financial authorities are looking into the staking services market. However, as the unnamed official specified to the journalists: The fears of the crypto community about the possible repercussions of the recent court deal between the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Kraken are starting to materialize. Following their American counterparts, South Korean regulators intend to examine the crypto-staking operators in the country. “The position is that there is nothing to be a problem because nothing has been done.” No details on the timeline and methods of the examination …

A bi-partisan anti-money laundering (AML) bill that covers “decentralized entities” such as decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and DAOs will soon be reintroduced to Congress, according to United States Senator Elizabeth Warren. Warren, a vocal crypto critic, argued at the Feb. 14 Senate Banking Committee’s hearing entitled “Crypto Crash: Why Financial System Safeguards are Needed for Digital Assets” that the crypto community wants decentralized entities running on code to be exempt from AML requirements: “In other words, they want a giant loophole for DeFi written into the law so they can launder money whenever a drug lord or a terrorist pays …

Silvergate Bank and its CEO Alan Lane have been accused of “aiding and abetting” a “multibillion-dollar fraudulent scheme orchestrated by Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF)” and two of his entities, FTX and Alameda Research, in a newly proposed class action lawsuit. The proposed class-action lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court of the Northern District of California on Feb. 14 by lawyers representing a San Francisco-based FTX user who — just like all other FTX customers — was frozen out of around $20,000 in crypto when the exchange collapsed last year. Plaintiff Soham Bhatia alleges that Silvergate Bank, its parent …

Users of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX have reportedly taken aim at financiers who promoted the platform suggesting their efforts added an “air of legitimacy” to the now-defunct exchange, a case labeled as "tricky" by a crypto lawyer. A Feb. 15 Bloomberg report revealed a class-action suit filed Feb. 14 by FTX investors against venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and private equity firms Thoma Bravo and Paradigm. The firms were accused by the investors of touting “their own investments” of hundreds of millions of dollars in FTX. It was alleged the firms were involved in a promotional marketing campaign in 2021 …

The official committee of Celsius creditors proposed suing Celsius co-founder Alex Mashinsky and other executives for "fraud, recklessness, gross mismanagement and self-interested conduct" that eventually led to the collapse of the crypto lender. In a proposed complaint filed in a New York Bankruptcy Court on Feb. 14, attorneys representing the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors said the move follows six months of investigations into Celsius’ current and former directors, officers and employees. The committee is made up of seven Celsius account holders and was appointed by the U.S. Trustee in July 2022. The committee represents the interest of Celsius' account …

The decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) behind Lido — the largest Ethereum staking pool — is deliberating whether it should sell or stake the $30 million in Ether (ETH) from its treasury. A proposal was submitted on Feb. 14 by the DAO’s financial unit, Steakhouse Financial that considers four choices, one of which contemplates staking part or all of its ETH on Lido in the form of Lido Staked ETH (stETH). Another would see LidoDAO selling a part or all of its 20,304 ETH for a stablecoin, with the purpose being to extend the DAO’s runway. The proposal comes as ETH …

Despite attempts to police cryptocurrency through enforcement actions, United States financial regulators “are bound by legal reality” and Congress will ultimately decide crypto regulations the policy expert for the crypto advocacy group Blockchain Association has suggested. The association's chief policy officer, Jake Chervinsky, shared his views in an extensive Feb. 14 Twitter thread on the state of crypto policy. He noted neither the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) “has the authority to comprehensively regulate crypto.” 14/ No matter how many enforcement actions the SEC and CFTC bring, they are bound by legal reality: …

USD Coin (USDC) issuer Circle has denied rumors that it received a "Wells Notice" over its United States dollar-pegged stablecoin. On Feb. 14, a now-deleted tweet from Fox Business reporter Eleanor Terrett claimed Circle had been ordered by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to cease the sale of USDC — due to the stablecoin being an unregistered security. Dante Disparte, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Global Policy at Circle Pay clarified on Twitter just 15 minutes after Terrett's tweet that his firm has not received a Wells Notice. .@circle has not received a Wells notice. https://t.co/lE74zHVLka — …