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SEC and CFTC Commissioners Reach Out To The Industry at DC Blockchain Summit

DC Blockchain Summit

A collegial chat between regulators from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) highlighted an impressive day-long agenda attracting 850 attendees to the DC Blockchain Summit from the Chamber of Digital Commerce in Washington, D.C. yesterday.

The Chamber’s Annemarie Tierney didn’t hesitate in her moderation role in the morning session with the blockchain industry’s two most important regulatory bodies and immediately brought to the fore the key differences in jurisdiction between the two agencies – securities vs. commodities – and under which agency do the various tokens and cryptocurrencies land. Commissioner Hester Peirce of the SEC went first and repeated the gyst of her well-known views that do not necessarily sync with the rest of the SEC commissioners and its Chairman:

“A token [that] is sold as part of securities offering does not in my mind necessarily mean that the token continues on in its entire life to have to be treated as a security. That’s one of the areas where I’d like to see us provide more clarity. It has not been our standard practice over the years to identify what are security offerings and what aren’t. It’s pretty broad rules. And we expect that when people are out there raising capital, they comply with our initial offering rules, regardless of what it is. But that’s led to the treatment of certain things – securities offerings that you might not think the underlying object to be sold is [part of the securities offering]. So that’s the distinction – I would like us to deal with it better (…)”

CFTC Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero weighed in next saying that she agreed with her counterpart in the SEC on the overall need for greater clarity – particularly around that which is decentralized. Beyond the jurisdictional question, in order to help her create a regulatory framework, Goldsmith Romero appealed to the audience on educating her and the CFTC on how the blockchain community innovates and also protects consumers: Continue reading “SEC and CFTC Commissioners Reach Out To The Industry at DC Blockchain Summit”

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In Wake Of FASB Decision, Taxes And Compliance Take Centerstage With DeFi

IRS Taxes and Reporting

Tax reporting, compliance and DeFi, oh my!

Two weeks ago, The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) agreed to take up a new review of accounting and disclosure standards for digital assets. The blockchain industry hailed it as a needed addition to FASB’s “technical agenda” and an indication of further acceptance of what the standards board calls “plain vanilla” cryptocurrencies – Bitcoin and Ether.

At last week’s Permissionless conference, Miles Fuller, a former IRS employee and current Head of Government Solutions for TaxBit, echoed industry frustration with today’s reporting standards saying in a discussion with Chamber of Digital Commerce’s Perianne Boring, “You need your balance sheet to be a full reflection of reality.”

As late as October 0f 2020, the not-for-profit accounting standards board, which guides all publicly traded companies such as digital asset holders Tesla and MicroStrategy, said that if the value of Bitcoin goes down, for example, a company must record the decrease in assets on its balance sheet on an annual basis. But if it goes up, the same companies only get to record a gain if the assets are sold.

TaxBit’s Fuller expanded the reporting pain point to the IRS and its intersection with decentralized finance (DeFi) noting how – as a former insider at the IRS – the agency was close to providing guidance to consumers on tax compliance with digital assets, but then Congress got in the way. Fuller added, “Sometimes I hear people put the onus on the IRS, but it’s Congress – the IRS is just trying to administer it.”

Continue reading “In Wake Of FASB Decision, Taxes And Compliance Take Centerstage With DeFi”

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Project Hamilton Turns from CBDCs to Short-Term Treasuries and Stablecoins?

Permissionless 2022 with Eric Peters

From the start of the fireside chat at last week’s Permissionless conference, red-pilled One River Asset Management founder and CIO Eric Peters delighted the decentralized finance throngs with one good story after another.

Anecdotes ranging from his firm’s $600 million of Bitcoin and Ethereum purchases via Coinbase in 2020 to cold-calling outgoing SEC Chair Jay Clayton the day after he left the commission in order to bring him aboard as a key advisor did not disappoint.

But, perhaps most revelatory was the closing anecdote raised by moderator Brett Tejpaul of Coinbase around his and Peters involvement in Project Hamilton – a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) research project with huge implications for the U.S. dollar, the world’s reserve currency and arguably the most important source of American power worldwide.

Project Hamilton, named after Alexander Hamilton and Margaret Hamilton, may have special focus around a CBDC for the United States financial system, but Tejpaul said there was a “group” of people who are trying to convince the Treasury to go in a new direction using privatized stablecoins rather than a CBDC.

Continue reading “Project Hamilton Turns from CBDCs to Short-Term Treasuries and Stablecoins?”

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In Spite of Terra, No Stablecoin Regulation Before End of Year

Permissionless 2022

Up-to-the-minute regulatory prognostications attracted strong attendance to a Permissionless 2022 panel discussion in Palm Beach, Florida last Wednesday.

Coming only a week after the TerraUSD and LUNA stablecoin debacle, everyone agreed that decentralized finance (DeFi) is receiving a brighter spotlight than ever. And in the wide-ranging discussion titled, “Regulatory Clouds on the Horizon,” industry advocates addressed the clouds which could rain potential regulation as well as who or what should ultimately be in charge of jurisdiction for the wider crypto ecosystem: the SEC, CFTC or a self-regulatory body.

Panelists included:

Quotes are lightly edited for clarity.

Moderator Jordan Nof of Tusk Venture Partners immediately began with the Terra elephant-in-the-room as Chamber of Digital Commerce’s Perianne Boring revealed that her association’s members are wondering how Terra will affect regulatory momentum, but noted the unique properties of Terra’s product saying:

“What’s interesting about Terra in particular is that it’s an algorithmic stablecoin. For those who have been following stablecoin policy closely, the President’s Working Group (PWG) on financial markets put out a set of recommendations for stablecoins last November – and that [group] included the chair of the SEC, the chair of the CFTC, the Fed, and Treasury. Treasury Secretary Yellen led this effort. The group had a number of recommendations for new regulations for stablecoins -essentially, Congress is going to need to implement these recommendations. The scope of that report and the recommendations was limited to stablecoins that are backed one-to-one to the dollar reserves in a bank account.  Algorithmic stablecoins were outside of that scope. So when Secretary Yellen pointed to Terra recently and said, ‘Look, this is why we need to push stablecoin recommendations forward.’ -to me, I didn’t think that was productive because the recommendations didn’t include algorithmic stablecoins. And I think it gives a lot of fuel to the SEC.

For those who remember SEC Chairman Gensler’s remarks, he started using a different vernacular. He started calling them ‘stable value funds’ (instead of stablecoins), essentially trying to put forward the argument that these are securities and they should be under the SEC’s jurisdiction. So, I think that the SEC could pretty easily say, ‘Look, this is why it should be within our jurisdiction.’

Continue reading “In Spite of Terra, No Stablecoin Regulation Before End of Year”

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SEC Chair Gensler Discusses FY 2023 Budget with House Appropriations (Video)

SEC's Gensler at House Appropriations

Fiscal Year 2023 is in focus today for U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler who is presenting his group’s budget for next year to the House Committee on Appropriations chaired by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D, CT).

The live hearing began at 10:30 am ET on Wednesday, May 18. Chair Gensler will also be answering questions with U.S. Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, who will discuss her commission’s budget for the next fiscal year.

As outlined by the SEC’s FY 2023 budget justification in March, points of discussion with the House committee as it relates to crypto includes:

    • Staying ahead of investor protections with more full-time employees for SEC’s Enforcement (ENF) division.
    • Continuing to grow the Investment Management (IM) division which approves and regulates ETFs and other financial vehicles which may involve cryptocurrencies.
    • Coordinate across the U.S. government and with international partners on applicable policy decisions related to integration and use of distributed ledger technology in a securities context.

See the on-demand video stream of the hearing:

There is no member of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus on House Appropriations.

Live blog …
Continue reading “SEC Chair Gensler Discusses FY 2023 Budget with House Appropriations (Video)”

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Preview: SEC Budget for 2023 and House Appropriations Committee Meeting

House Appropriations

On Capitol Hill this Wednesday, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler will appear before the House Appropriations Committee to review the SEC’s 2023 budget proposal as it looks to continue to fulfill its mission to “protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.”

In late March, the SEC submitted its budget “justification” to Congress (PDF) as a precursor to the meeting and revealed several areas in which it expects to continue to engage crypto markets in 2023.

Side note: there are no members of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus on the House Appropriations Committee.

Enforcement

Following up on the SEC’s recent announcement of doubling positions related to crypto enforcement this year, the 2023 budget justification outlines a request for 125 additional positions in the Department of Enforcement (ENF) to help enforce regulations across financial assets – including crypto:

“ENF requests 125 additional positions to enhance the division’s ability to timely pursue the wide variety of misconduct within the SEC’s remit. They will also strengthen ENF’s capabilities to investigate new and emerging issues, including crypto-asset markets, cyber-related risks, and the environmental, social, and governance space. Finally, it is expected that the number of litigated cases will continue to rise as ENF increasingly holds wrongdoers accountable for their misconduct with more meaningful and, in some instances, escalating sanctions. ENF requires additional resources to ensure that it has an adequate number of attorneys to staff the increasing number of litigated cases.”

The ENF only accounts for an increase of 63 full-time employees in the justification’s line item – from 1302 in 2022 to 1365 in 2023 .

Investment Management Continue reading “Preview: SEC Budget for 2023 and House Appropriations Committee Meeting”

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Stablecoin Debacle Speaks To Potential For Congressional Action

Stablecoins

Clearly not all stablecoins are stable as crypto experienced a major liquidation moment this past week. How this will affect blockchain regulation in DC remains to be seen, but there is opportunity.

To recap, the stablecoin known as TerraUSD (a.k.a UST -its ticker) went down 90+% and the governance token associated with its peg – Terra LUNA – cratered a similar percentage. Together, the size of the loss is reminiscent of Lehman Brothers and its bankruptcy during the Great Financial Crisis in 2008.

Market cap comparison:

    • Lehman Brothers – $60 billion at its peak in 2007.  Filed for bankruptcy and effectively went to zero in late 2008.
    • TerraUSD – $18.6 billion market cap as of May 8, 2022. Approximately $2 billion as of today according to CoinMarketCap.
    • Terra LUNA – The backing governance token for TerraUSD reached a peak market cap of $41.05 billion as of April 3, 2022. Today, it’s $1.8 billion.

It should be noted that the remaining value for TerraUSD and Terra LUNA could be fleeting as traders try to play an arbitrage opportunity. But, overall the future of both appears bleak.

For now, the promise of providing stability in volatile crypto markets with stablecoins appears to be damaged. False advertising? How will government policymakers react?

Continue reading “Stablecoin Debacle Speaks To Potential For Congressional Action”

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For Crypto, The Next New SEC Hire May Be More Important Than Chair Gensler

SEC Job Openings

The listing slid quietly into the public last Thursday, but the new “Senior Officer-National Unit Chief (Crypto Asset & Cyber Unit)” role at the Securities and Exchange Commission could have huge ramifications in determining the future of cryptocurrency, NFTs and blockchain technology in the United States.

This role may replace Kristina Littman who the Wall Street Journal reports is leaving her leadership role in enforcement at the SEC in June.

The ad for the new role came in advance of yesterday’s SEC announcement by Chairman Gary Gensler that the enforcement division of the “Crypto Asset & Cyber Unit” (was “Cyber Unit”) will add 20 positions “for protecting investors in crypto markets and from cyber-related threats.” This will bring the unit to 50 positions according to the SEC release.

Influential responsibilities in the Unit Chief job listing include:
Continue reading “For Crypto, The Next New SEC Hire May Be More Important Than Chair Gensler”