The Staff clarifies that protocol staking does not qualify as a security under the Howey Test, clearing the way for market participants to engage in staking....more
The decision, which addresses a broad range of market activity by Coinbase relating to 13 third-party tokens, could have significant implications for market participants. On March 27, 2024, Judge Katherine Failla of the US...more
In April 2023, the SEC re-proposed amendments to Exchange Act Rule 3b-16 to expand the definition of what it means to be an exchange. When the SEC initially proposed these amendments in January 2022, there were zero direct...more
Summary - The SEC’s focus on the crypto industry expanded this week to include non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In its first NFT-enforcement action, the SEC settled with Impact Theory, a media and entertainment company, over...more
A US court recently handed down a landmark ruling addressing the question of whether the crypto token XRP falls under the definition of “security”. The US court ruled that the same crypto token may be classified differently...more
In July of 2022, the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) each alleged insider trading violations against a former Coinbase employee Ishan Wahi (“Ishan”), his brother...more
This year had already seen an uptick in federal enforcement activity focused on digital assets with the expansion of the SEC’s Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit (see our prior client alert on that expansion and its impact here)...more