On April 7, 2024, the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut approved the Securities and Exchange Commission’s request to dismiss its action against a hedge fund manager for the manager’s alleged failure...more
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has a lot on its plate—too many enforcement cases, not enough time, and a limited appetite for dragging out every compliance misstep. So, yesterday, at the International Futures...more
On February 27, 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission formally abandoned its enforcement action against Coinbase. ...more
3/5/2025
/ Coinbase ,
Compliance ,
Cryptoassets ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Digital Assets ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Financial Regulatory Reform ,
Howey ,
Investment ,
Regulatory Agenda ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Securities Regulation
On Friday, Coinbase announced that the SEC staff had agreed in principle to dismiss its case alleging the company had failed to register as a securities exchange, broker-dealer, and clearing agency. We can expect the...more
2/25/2025
/ Blockchain ,
Coinbase ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Cybersecurity ,
Digital Assets ,
Enforcement Actions ,
FinTech ,
Regulatory Agenda ,
Regulatory Reform ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Securities Regulation
The Seward & Kissel Tax Group has collected some data and intelligence about what crypto tax changes we may see this year. President Trump aims to assess and revive cryptocurrency regulations via executive order, Congress...more
2/21/2025
/ Compliance ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ,
Digital Assets ,
Digital Currency ,
Executive Orders ,
IRS ,
Popular ,
Regulatory Agenda ,
Reporting Requirements ,
Tax Planning
Last week President Trump signed an Executive Order pausing enforcement of the nation’s most robust anti-bribery statute, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”). The EO seeks a complete overhaul of the FCPA enforcement...more
2/14/2025
/ Anti-Bribery ,
Attorney General ,
Cartels ,
Compliance ,
Corporate Governance ,
Criminal Prosecution ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) ,
National Security ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Significant Transnational Criminal Organization ,
UK
If there is one enforcement shift to expect in the next year or so, it is an uptick in federal law enforcement moves designed to overwhelm the targets. This means more search warrants (or “raids”) at businesses, especially...more
According to reports, more than 50 lawyers and staffers in the SEC’s Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit have been reassigned to other roles in the agency....more
On November 22, 2024, the SEC released its fiscal year 2024 enforcement statistics. According to the accompanying press release, the SEC filed 583 total enforcement actions—431 of them standalone actions—while obtaining $8.2...more
11/26/2024
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
Dodd-Frank ,
Enforcement ,
Insider Trading ,
Investment Adviser ,
Investment Companies ,
Market Abuse ,
Non-Public Information ,
Press Releases ,
Sanctions ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Whistleblower Protection Policies
There are some in the crypto community who—frustrated with the enforcement first approach of (outgoing) SEC Chair Gary S. Gensler—invested heavily to elect Donald J. Trump the 47th President of the United States. Was that a...more
The Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) recently finalized Treasury Regulations (the “Final Regulations”) and published two notices and a Revenue Procedure (the “Transitional Guidance”) for broker reporting of certain...more
8/29/2024
/ Anti-Money Laundering ,
Brokers ,
Digital Assets ,
Fair Market Value ,
Final Rules ,
IRS ,
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) ,
Popular ,
Reporting Requirements ,
Stablecoins ,
Tax Code ,
Tax Planning
On August 7, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York permanently enjoined Ripple from future violations of Section 5 of the Securities Act of 1933—that is, from the unregistered offer and sale of...more
On June 28, 2024, in SEC v. Binance Holdings Limited, et al., the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a Memorandum Opinion & Order on the defendants’ motions to dismiss the SEC’s charges against them. ...more
On July 26, 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a Complaint in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles charging activist short publisher Andrew Left and Citron Capital, LLC, an investment adviser he...more
On June 13, 2024, Terraform Labs PTE, Ltd. and Do Kwon agreed to pay more than $4.5 billion to settle the SEC’s case against them. The settlement followed a jury verdict holding Terraform Labs and Kwon liable for securities...more
On May 23, 2024, the SEC approved listing of eight ETH ETPs. The order approved the applications to list the ARK 21Shares Ethereum ETF, the Fidelity Ethereum Fund, the Grayscale Ethereum Trust, the Bitwise Ethereum ETF, the...more
On April 5, 2024, after an eight-day trial, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California returned a verdict for the Securities and Exchange Commission in its first “shadow trading” case after...more
4/10/2024
/ Asset Management ,
California ,
Commercial Litigation ,
Corporate Governance ,
Fund Managers ,
Insider Trading ,
Investment Adviser ,
Investors ,
Policies and Procedures ,
Risk Management ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Securities Litigation
On March 8, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed and remanded a District Court decision that dismissed all claims by plaintiff crypto investors against Binance, an international electronic exchange...more
3/21/2024
/ Appeals ,
Blue Sky Laws ,
Broker-Dealer ,
Class Action ,
Crypto Exchanges ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Extraterritoriality Rules ,
Foreign Jurisdictions ,
Investors ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Token Sales
On January 31, 2024, bankrupt Genesis Global Holdco, LLC, on behalf of its subsidiary Genesis Global Capital, LLC1 asked the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York to approve a settlement reached...more
On November 20, 2023, the SEC filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against Payward, Inc. and Payward Ventures, Inc. which, together, do business as Kraken. The...more
11/28/2023
/ Blockchain ,
Broker-Dealer ,
CFTC ,
Clearing Agencies ,
Cryptoassets ,
Ethereum ,
Fraud ,
Howey ,
Investors ,
Market Participants ,
Negligence ,
Ripple ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Securities Exchange Act ,
Unregistered Securities
On Sept 13, 2023, for its second non-fungible token (NFT) related enforcement action, the SEC issued a settled Order against Stoner Cats 2, LLC (“SC2”) for SC2’s offer and sale of 10,320 NFTs linked to images of characters...more
Summary of the Recent SEC Actions -
On August 8, 2023, in yet another set of enforcement actions in the space, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) settled charges against ten broker-dealers and a dually...more
To paraphrase what Ben Franklin may have been alluding to nearly 300 years ago in his famous quote, often the best approach when it comes to reducing the risk of litigation and government enforcement proceedings is to take...more
7/27/2023
/ Anti-Corruption ,
Anti-Discrimination Policies ,
Anti-Harassment Policies ,
Anti-Money Laundering ,
California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) ,
Compliance ,
Data Privacy ,
Data Security ,
Document Review ,
Due Diligence ,
Employment Contract ,
Enforcement ,
Ethics ,
Force Majeure Clause ,
Fraud ,
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) ,
Health and Safety ,
Insurance Industry ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Investigations ,
Non-Public Information ,
Performance Reviews ,
Personal Information ,
Pricing ,
Reporting Requirements ,
Risk Mitigation ,
Sales ,
Social Media ,
Technology Sector
Three days before Christmas 2020, the SEC served Ripple Labs Inc. and two of its executives with a lawsuit. How is that for a present under the tree? As the SKrypto Blog reported at the time, the main issue was whether XRP, a...more
7/19/2023
/ Coinbase ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Digital Assets ,
Howey ,
Ripple ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Securities Litigation ,
Securities Regulation ,
Securities Violations ,
Sellers ,
Token Sales ,
Unregistered Securities
On June 5, 2023, the SEC filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, known to the world as...more