Joseph Longo, the chairman of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is calling for a regulatory loophole to be closed that allowed FTX to acquire an Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) in the country without the full suite of checks. According to a Dec. 5 report from the Australian Financial Review, Longo made the comments while speaking at a joint parliament committee on corporations and financial services on Monday local time. A major topic the committee dug into was of course the recent FTX and Alameda Research meltdown led by the now-troubled founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Longo defended his regulatory …

United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission chair Rostin Behnam told a Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee meeting Dec. 1 that his agency’s regulations contain “core elements that have served the markets for decades.” But as the fallout from the FTX collapse gets sorted out, notable gaps in current legislation have come to light, Behnam and the senators agreed. Sen. Tina Smith called the FTX collapse “shocking, not surprising,” and said that future crises will continue to occur as long as regulatory gaps remain. Behnam pointed out that the Securities and Exchange Commission has the authority to require basic safeguards …

Referring to the events surrounding the collapse of FTX as “a handful of magic beans”, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren seemed to frame the “contagion” spreading through the crypto space as a partisan issue. Speaking at a Senate Banking Committee nomination hearing on Nov. 30, Warren addressed committee counsel Jonathan McKernan, who confirmed that FTX’s bankruptcy had largely not affected traditional banking institutions in the United States. The Massachusetts senator, an outspoken skeptic of cryptocurrencies, used some of her time to applaud the work of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, acting chair Martin Gruenberg, who attended as part of his …

Bitcoin (BTC) price gained 6.1% between Nov. 28 and Nov. 30 after briefly testing the $17,000 support. Favorable regulatory winds might have helped fuel the rally after the Binance exchange announced the acquisition of a regulated crypto exchange in Japan on Nov. 30. Binance shut its operations in Japan in 2018 after being warned by the Japan Financial Services Agency for operating without a license. The acquisition of Sakura Exchange BitCoin would mark the re-entry of Binance in the Japanese market. Furthermore, Gemini exchange announced new regulatory approvals in Italy and Greece on Nov. 30. The exchange was granted registration …

Sherrod Brown, chair of the United States Senate Banking Committee, has called on Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to work with financial regulators and lawmakers on comprehensive crypto legislation “in the wake of FTX’s implosion.” In a Nov. 30 letter to Yellen, Brown requested the Treasury Secretary coordinate with regulators to address crypto based on recommendations from the Financial Stability Oversight Committee, or FSOC. The committee chair cited crypto exchange FTX’s “alarming fraud”, liquidity crunch, and bankruptcy as an example of financial risk that should not “spillover into traditional financial markets and institutions.” “I ask that you coordinate with the other …

Crypto executives and politicians are becoming louder in their calls for crypto regulation as the aftermath of the FTX collapse continues to reverberate through the industry. In just the last 24 hours, the European Central Bank (ECB) president Christine Lagarde called regulation and supervision of crypto an “absolute necessity” for the European Union, while United States House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters announced that lawmakers will explore the collapse of FTX in a Dec. 13 inquiry. On Nov. 28, United States Senator and crypto supporter Cynthia Lummis described the collapse of FTX as a wake-up call for congress, according …

The monumental collapse of FTX will go down as one of the biggest corporate scandals of all time. But, at least Sam Bankman-Fried, or SBF, is sorry. On Nov. 22, the disgraced founder of FTX penned a letter to his former employees describing his role in the company’s bankruptcy. “I never intended this to happen,” he wrote. “I did not realize the full extent of the margin position, nor did I realize the magnitude of the risk posed by a hyper-correlated crash.” Get this: SBF still thinks the company can be saved because “there are billion of dollars of genuine …

No matter if one analyzes Ether's (ETH) longer-term or weekly time frame, there is little hope for bulls. Besides the negative 69% year-to-date performance, a descending channel has been pressuring the ETH price while offering resistance at $1,200. Regulatory uncertainty continues to weigh down the sector. For example, Starling, a digital bank based in the United Kingdom, announced on Nov. 22 that it would no longer allow customers to send or receive money from digital asset exchanges or merchants. The bank described cryptocurrencies as "high risk and heavily used for criminal purposes." Other concerning news for the Ethereum ecosystem involved …

The downfall of former crypto exchange FTX has had the entire industry in disarray since the situation began to unravel days before it declared bankruptcy on Nov. 11. A new op-ed from United States Senator Elizabeth Warren revealed a negative stance towards the industry with regard to the fallout. Warren wrote that the crypto industry is on a “well-worn path of financial innovation,” which starts with exciting rewards but ends in “crippling losses.” She compared it to subprime mortgages of 2008, penny stocks and credit-default swaps. The Senator said what happened with FTX should be a “wake-up call” to regulators …

United States senators Elizabeth Warren, Tina Smith, and Richard Durbin have renewed their calls for Fidelity Investments to reconsider offering a Bitcoin (BTC)-linked 401(k) retirement product. In a letter addressed to Fidelity Investments CEO Abigail Johnson on Nov. 21, the three senators said the recent fall of FTX is more reason than any for the $4.5 million asset management firm to reconsider its Bitcoin offering to retirement savers, stating: “The recent implosion of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange, has made it abundantly clear the digital asset industry has serious problems.” The senators also added that “charismatic wunderkinds, opportunistic fraudsters, and self-proclaimed …

The United States Senate Agriculture Committee has announced that Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, chair Rostin Behnam will be one of the witnesses in a hearing exploring the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. According to the Senate Agriculture Committee website, on Dec. 1 the full committee will listen to testimony from Behnam and presumably other individuals with information about the liquidity issues and subsequent downfall of FTX. The hearing, titled ‘Why Congress Needs to Act: Lessons Learned from the FTX Collapse’ will be one of the first in which U.S. lawmakers explore what happened with the major crypto exchange …

Economic uncertainty amid geopolitical tensions, rising interest rates and slowing economic growth have put a strain on the United States financial system. Reacting to the massive losses reported by the traditional banks in Q2 2022, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) decided to prioritize five key policies this year, which include evaluating the risks of crypto assets to the banking system. Addressing the Senate Banking Committee at a recent hearing , FDIC acting chairman Martin J. Gruenberg highlighted the moderate decline in net income of banks in Q1 and Q2 2022 owing to an increase in loan balances and provision …