On April 3, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it has seized virtual currency worth an estimated $112 million linked to cryptocurrency investment scams. Seizure warrants for six virtual currency accounts were authorized by judges in the District of Arizona, the Central District of California, and the District of Idaho. The virtual currency
The Federal Reserve issued a press release announcing its plans for a July debut of FedNow, its service “to facilitate nationwide reach of instant payment services by financial institutions.” As previously discussed here, the FedNow service will provide individuals and businesses the ability to send and receive instant payments through the Federal Reserve’s
On March 29, the New Mexico Financial Institutions Division of the Regulation and Licensing Department’s (NM FID) new rule on the New Mexico-Annual Percentage Rate (NM-APR) becomes effective. We previously blogged about New Mexico’s 36% APR cap on loans of $10,000 or less under the Small Loan Act (SLA) and Bank Installment Loan Act (BILA)
On February 22, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed an enforcement action against digital asset exchange, CoinEx, for failing to register as a securities and commodities broker-dealer and for falsely representing itself as a crypto exchange without appropriate registration in violation of New York law. In the petition, filed in the New York
On February 23, The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (the Board), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) (collectively, the Agencies) issued a statement on the liquidity risks presented by funding provided to banks related to certain crypto activities and offering some effective
On February 14, the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (Committee) conducted an open session hearing entitled “Crypto Crash: Why Financial System Safeguards are Needed for Digital Assets.”
The chosen title of the hearing very clearly highlights two issues that continue to plague the digital asset market: (1) the financial harm imposed
The Federal Deposit Insurance Act (FDIA) generally prohibits insured state banks, but not uninsured state member banks, from acting as principal in activities that are not permissible for national banks. Relying on its authority under the FDIA to limit the activities of state member banks, on January 27, 2023, the Federal Reserve Board (Fed) issued
Throughout the latter half of 2022, filing for bankruptcy became a reality for many high-profile crypto firms. The resurgence of “crypto winter” has brought many crypto-related entities to their proverbial knees. Indeed, in November 2021, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization reached an all-time high of approximately $3 trillion. That figure has decreased substantially, and today
On December 21, 2022, outgoing Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) introduced legislation entitled the Stablecoin TRUST Act of 2022 that would establish the first-ever federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins. In the press release announcing the proposed legislation, Senator Toomey stated that he “put forward a regulatory model that won’t undermine competition by favoring entrenched incumbents
On January 3, The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (the Agencies) issued a joint statement to banking organizations highlighting a number of risks associated with crypto-assets.
While the Agencies expressly state that “banking organizations are neither prohibited nor