U.S. Court Cases Confirms Cryptocurrencies As Commodities

A federal Judge has ruled that a token is a commodity saying that the U.S. Commodities Futures and Trading Commission (CFTC) has the authority to prosecute fraud and manipulation in the crypto space.

In her landmark ruling, Federal Judge Rya Zobel cited three other crypto-related cases that arrive at the same conclusion.

CFTC Chariman Chris Giancarlo confirmed it last Monday.

The court case revolves around My Big Coin Pay Inc. and a token called my big coin (MBC).

According to James Mcdonald, CFTC Director of Enforcement, the new ruling is important confirming the authority of the agency to investigate and combat fraud in the virtual currency markets.

The three cases that was cited include: the Mcdonnell Case in 2018, Bitfinex case in 2016 and Coinflip case in 2015, all of which ruled that cryptocurrencies are commodities covered by the Commodity Exchange Act and under the supervision and regulated by the CFTC.

Block Size Increase In Bitcoin Without Hard Fork Possible

Mark Friedenbach, blockstream co-founder have presented a way to theoretically make future, contentious changes to bitcoin without having to undergo a hard fork.

These include changes made in blocksize or relating to any changes to the algorithm currently being used by bitcoin for the time being.

Friedenbach’s proposal is called Forward Blocks, he argues that this mechanism makes it possible to be implemented via a soft fork without going through the process of doing a hard fork similar to what have been done with SegWit.

He describes Forward Blocks as a mash-up of a variety of types of forks which on their own have unacceptable trade-off but when combined cancels out most of the bad tradeoffs while retaining the combined benefits.

The new mechanism has gathered mixed reaction from the community ranging from calling it a breakthrough for some supporters while other calling it a network attack.

Nevertheless Friedenbach isn’t really advocating for it to be used on bitcoin but an available option that the community might use if it finds it worthy to implement.

SEC Files Multiple Amendments Signaling Bitcoin ETFs Approval

The Securities and Exchange Commission is set to address some of their past mistakes and issued an amendment last October 4 to the proposed rule change to list and trade shares of the GraniteShares Bitcoin ETFs.

The willingness of SEC is a sign of optimism to all those who believe the importance of approval of Bitcoin ETF as a catalyst to boost the market of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

The October 4 decision calls for parties interested in supporting and opposing the GraniteShares ETF will have the opportunity to submit their views to the SEC for consideration.

The new member of the commission have presented to the public favorable positions regarding the adoption of cryptocurrencies and other innovative finance technologies.

In addition to this another revision about the ProShares Bitcoin ETF and the Direxion Daily Bitcon Shares the same day.

This behavior is set a precedent for other projects and may facilitate the opening of channels for approval of other ETFs in the future.

European Banks Probed For Facilitating 661 Million Worth of Crypto In Two Years

The Financial Crime Investigation Service (FCIS) of Tallin is investigating European banks for facilitating 661 million worth of crypto in the span of two years.

They have found that around 500 private individuals and 100 corporate entities have conducted transactions since 2017.

They are all clients of one of the following banks and financial services providers, SEB, Swedbank, Luminor, Danske Bank, Citadele, Pervesk, and Mister Tango.

The news comes after major international banks were implicated in recent reports of money laundering cases.

According to Mindaugas Petrauskas, the director of FCIS, there is high risk of money laundering in both crypto trading and token sales.

The question arises as to where does the money going into ICOs and Crypto trading comes from.

He also expresses the difficulty in monitoring and regulating the space due to some intrinsic characteristics of cryptocurrencies like anonymity of transactions, different jurisdictions of exchanges, the composition of participants who more often than not international, and the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies, feature that the crypto community perceives as positives.

Yale Invests In Crypto

Under the stewardship of David Swensen, The Yale University’s Investment Office have allocated some of its fund to Paradigm, a new cryptocurrency fund that has raised $400 million dollars.

This move signals a significant legitimization of the asset class as Swensen invented the Endowment Model of investing, revolutionizing the industry and using it to grow Yale’s endowments from just over a billion in 1985 to about $29.4 billion.

The Paradigm investment shows faith in a crypto fund being led by Fred Ehrsa, co-founder of Coinbase, Matt Huang, former principal of venture capital giant Sequoia Capital and Charles Noyes, formerly of Pantera Capital.

Although as of the time of this writing, there were no exact amount revealed on Yale’s investments it would likely account for a small portion of the Endowment’s nearly 60 percent alternative asset class allocation which includes venture capital hedge funds and private equity funds.

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