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Regulation
It’s time for Bitcoin to put on its big-boy pants. If you want to be real money, it turns out, you have to follow real money rules.
In light of that, the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, wants to apply FATF’s travel rule to crypto to make transactions more traceable. The rule, which already applies to real money transfers, will require all transfers of crypto assets to be accompanied by full details of both the sender and the receiver.
“Crypto assets are increasingly used for money laundering and other criminal purposes,” the European Commission VP said in a press conference. “We’ll now bring crypto assets fully in scope of EU AML rules. (Press release; BBC)
In my last newsletter, I touched on a new stablecoin academic paper — “Taming Wildcat Stablecoins.” I’m bringing it up again because of the paper’s political importance, which is getting overlooked right now.
The paper describes Tether as an equity instrument akin to a money-market fund and all other stablecoins as debt instruments. This appears to be an intentful regulatory distinction. I’m guessing it will come up again when the hammer falls on stablecoins — particularly Tether. Read the paper!
A bipartisan infrastructure bill agreed on by Senators and President Biden proposes to raise $28 billion from crypto investors by applying stricter IRS reporting requirements to exchanges and other parties. (Bloomberg)
CFTC Commissioner Dan Berkowitz spoke about decentralized finance at DACOM DeFI 2021. He has talked about DeFi platforms in the past. But this time, he said the contracts themselves are illegal. (Youtube)
“If you have a system where you take out the intermediary and you just have a bunch of people trading contracts, those contracts are still in violation of the Commodity and Exchange Act,” he said. “It’s not just the intermediaries that are regulated — it’s the instruments themselves and the people that are using them.”
On June 27, the Senate Banking Committee held a hearing called “Cryptocurrencies: What are they good for?” If you don’t have time to listen to the whole thing, Alexis Goldstein, senior policy analyst at nonprofit coalition Americans for Financial Reform, recaps the important bits in a Twitter thread.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is concerned about the risk crypto poses to the financial system. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, she suggested Yellen tap the Financial Stability Oversight Council — a panel of top regulators that the Treasury secretary chairs — to “act with urgency.” Warren cited stablecoins, DeFi, exposure to hedge funds, and risk to banks. (Politico)
Tether’s criminal probe
The big news: The US Justice Department is investigating Tether for bank fraud. It looks like the DoJ may have leaked a target letter to Bloomberg. (If you’re not sure what that is, here is a sample target letter.)
I wrote a blog post explaining Tether’s banking history. David Gerard and I also did a podcast on the topic for “When the Music Stops.”
Why would the DoJ leak a target letter? Because they are giving the public a heads up on what is to come. Fifty percent of all bitcoin is still traded against tethers and this could have a potentially big impact on the market. In other words: Get your funds off Tether exchanges now.
The Tether printer is still paused, as it has been since the end of May/early June. There are currently 62 billion USDT in circulation, with Tether having burned another 200 million USDT in the last week.
We don’t know why Tether stopped printing. But the timing corresponds with China’s crackdown on crypto and all the stuff going on with Binance. It’s also possible Tether knew the DoJ was onto them.
Tether says that its reserves consist mostly of commercial paper, which would make it one of the largest commercial paper holders in the world. Is it Chinese commercial paper? Tether won’t say, but if it is, that could pose a problem for Tether as Chinese regulators want real estate developers — major issuers of CP — to start disclosing more details of CP issuance on a monthly basis. (CNBC)
In their infinite wisdom, Tether execs — CTO Paolo Ardoino and General Counsel Stuart Hoegner — decided it would be a good idea to go on CNBC to be interviewed by Deirdre Bosa. (Youtube)
Naturally, Bosa asked them about their commercial paper.
“We don’t disclose our commercial partners, so that is quite important,” Ardoino said. “Given our portfolio composition in commercial paper, we believe that it is quite important to respect the privacy of the banking partners that we work with.”
Privacy of banking partners? Just about every money-market fund out there lists all of its holdings by size and issuer and CUSIP — a unique code assigned to most financial instruments.
“Everything in this interview melted my brain,” says Bloomberg’s Matt Levine.
Circle releases a new attestation
Circle released its May attestation with additional transparency around its USDC stablecoin. The Boston firm is trying to go public via a SPAC.
In the past, Circle’s attestations pointed vaguely to “approved investments.” Now it has released a full breakdown of its investments, sort of. (Doomberg)
Sure, it’s a step toward greater transparency, but why doesn’t Circle just go ahead and release its Q1 financials? If everything is on the up and up, that would seem like the simplest way to remove any doubt about USDC’s backing.
Frances Coppola, who worked in banking for over a dozen years, thinks Circle is commingling funds. (Twitter thread)
Binance loses another wheel
The wheels keep falling off the Binance bus. UK bank NatWest has joined Santander and Barclays in cutting off payments to the crypto exchange. (Coindesk)
The bad news follows the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority issuing a consumer warning about Binance on June 26, which Binance played down as no big deal.
In the UK, crypto businesses are required to register with the FCA. Binance Markets Ltd., the company’s UK arm, applied but withdrew its application on May 17 after intensive engagements with the FCA who had concerns with the exchange’s AML safeguards and lack of a headquarters.
Hedge funds are also backing away from the ticking time bomb that is Binance. Tyr Capital has significantly reduced its exposure, along with ARK36. (FT)
Binance changed its withdrawal limit from 2 BTC to just 0.06 BTC for all users without KYC. The change goes into effect for new users right away and existing users on Aug. 4. (Binance website; archive)
Either Binance is making a greater effort to comply with AML rules — or they are insolvent. I’m going to go with #2.
Meanwhile, CZ is pretending everything is fine, so people don’t move all their funds off the exchange in a panic, causing the entire house of cards to collapse, like Mt Gox in 2014.
CZ talks a big game about making Binance compliant, but that is all it is and all that it’s ever been — talk. Along those lines, he is now discussing taking Binance US public via an IPO. (Cointelegraph)
He also says he wants to hire a new CEO as the exchange tries to comply with regulations.(Coindesk)
If you still have money on Binance, get it off now. Otherwise, #SFYL.
A world of hell for BlockFi
New Jersey-based crypto lending firm BlockFi is getting into all sorts of trouble over its high-yield BlockFi Interest Accounts, or BIAs, which look a lot like unregistered securities.
You send crypto to BlockFi and they issue you BIAs, which earn 7.5% interest. You get paid monthly, and the incentive is to just keep rolling the funds back into BIAs, because look how rich you are — on paper!
The New Jersey Bureau of Securities issued a summary cease and desist order to BlockFi ordering the company to stop offering BIAs to customers in NJ. Originally, the order was set to hit on July 22, but it has been delayed to Sept. 2, according to BlockFi.
In a press release on July 21, the Alabama Securities Commission said it has issued a show of cause to the firm. The order gives BlockFi 28 days to explain why they should not be directed to cease and desist from selling unregistered securities in Alabama.
Following that, the Texas State Securities Board said in a notice of hearing on July 22 that the BIA is a security under state law. A hearing is set for Oct. 13. Texas also claims BlockFi violated the state laws by selling securities without being registered as a dealer or agent.
Vermont also issued a show of cause order on July 22.
Meanwhile, BlockFi CEO Zac Prince has spun this like a bunch of good news. “We’ve said time and again that the key to our industry’s success is appropriate regulation. Ultimately, we see this as an opportunity for BlockFi to help define the regulatory environment for our ecosystem,” he said in a blog post.
Virgil Griffith taken into custody
Virgil Griffith, the former Ethereum developer who got himself into hot water by going to DPRK and giving a talk on crypto, has got himself into more hot water.
Griffith, who has been living with his parents since his indictment, violated his bail conditions by trying to access his crypto on Coinbase. The judge thinks he is a flight risk, so he’s put Griffith behind bars to await trial in September.
Since his arrest in November 2019, Griffith’s $100,000 in ETH has grown to $1 million in ETH. He had his mother reach out to Coinbase on his behalf. Griffith is a smart guy, who apparently does dumb things.
“Though the defendant is a bright well-educated man, his method of circumvention of the Order was neither clever nor effective,” the judge said. (Court filing)
Other newsworthy bits
MicroStrategy just posted a $299 million loss for Q2 after betting the house on Bitcoin. But like any crazed degenerate gambler, Michael Saylor plans to keep buying more bitcoin. (Press release; Forbes)
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele is pioneering hustle bro populism. Bukele distracted from his self-coup when he announced bitcoin soon after. (FP)
El Faro got a copy of the presentation Cardano gave to the El Salvador government. This is somewhere between hilarious and tragic. Bukele and his regime want to implement their colón-dollar stablecoin by Sept. 7, yet they literally have no plan for how to make it happen, so they are fishing for anything. (Leaked presentation)
Coinbase is the target of a class-action. The lead plaintiff, Brandon Leidel, claims he lost money investing in COIN when the price of the shares fell right after all the VCs cashed out. (Complaint; Law360, paywalled)
Dfinity has been hit with a class-action claiming the company sold its Internet Computer Project (ICP) tokens as an unregistered security. The suit targets Olaf Carlson-Wee’s crypto hedge fund Polychain Capital, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and Dfinity’s founder Dominic Williams as the “controlling defendants.” (Complaint; Decrypt)
DeFi exchange Uniswap is blocking 100 tokens from its website — including tokenized stocks and some derivatives. The move came right after the CFTC commissioner said contracts were illegal on DeFi. (Alexis Goldstein)
Paxos’ General Counsel takes aim at Tether and USDC, claiming that the two stablecoins it issues — Paxos Standard and BUSD — are both regulated, while Tether and USDC are not. It also claims Paxos Standard and BUSD are are backed by 96% cash or cash equivalents. (Paxos blog post; The Block)
Multilevel-marketing schemes are a predatory wealth transfer from low-information people recruited into the scheme directly to the company upper ranks’ pockets. Stephen Dhiel writes about unintentional scams. (Blog post)
Bitcoin’s gold rush was always an illusion. Millions of people have bought into the idea that crypto could make them rich, fast. But these booms are fake. Really good story in the New Statesmen.
Amy Castor 