The Disrupt

“Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), the ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee, unveiled a safe harbor bill on Tuesday ahead of a committee hearing with Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler.

The “Clarity for Digital Tokens Act of 2021″ would effectively codify SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce’s Token Safe Harbor proposal, a pitch the regulator made in 2020 and 2021 to create a pathway for crypto startups to launch token sales to fund their projects without fear of SEC enforcement.

Under the Peirce proposal, these businesses would have three years to either register with the securities regulator or meet a set of requirements to prove themselves fully decentralized.

Industry proponents praised the effort in statements on Tuesday. Perianne Boring, the president of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, said the bill “has the potential” to create a path for startups in the crypto industry.”

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“SEC Chair Gary Gensler told Congress on Tuesday that the SEC has no plans to ban crypto.

Gensler’s assertion that the SEC does not plan to ban crypto mirrors similar remarks made by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell last week, when the central bank head told the House Financial Services Committee that the Fed had “no plans to ban” the $2.2 trillion asset class.”

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“BTC is up about 22% over the past week and has decoupled from slumping global equities. Sentiment on bitcoin significantly improved over the past week, signaling a shift away from market panic, according to the Fear and Greed Index. Technical indicators are also showing improving short-term momentum.

We expect short-term overbought conditions to be weathered long enough for a test of minor resistance near $52.9K, a breakout above which would target the all-time high.”

See Also: 4 Factors Helping Bitcoin to Decouple From Falling Stock Market

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“The three firms will support different segments of the market – from small DAOs to multibillion-dollar crypto funds.

The partnership will involve MetaMask Institutional being integrated with BitGo wallets. He says that’s significant because it ‘validates the growing appetite for institutional investors to participate in DeFi with the highest level of security possible.’

Bruzzesi said BitGo is seeing pent-up demand from institutional players to gain access and exposure to decentralized lending platforms. BitGo currently has $40 billion in assets under custody; once the integration with MetaMask Institutional is completed, over 500 firms in crypto will be able to access DeFi.”

See Also: Fifth Largest US Bank Launches Crypto Custody With NYDIG Backing
See Also: Bitpanda to Offer Its Digital Asset Investing Product to Italian Banks, Fintechs
See Also: DeFi Custodian Trustology Gets Green Light From UK’s FCA

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“Circle, a key supporter of the USDC stablecoin, said in a regulatory filing that it received an “investigative subpoena” from the SEC’s Enforcement Division in July. That subpoena requests ‘documents and information regarding certain of our holdings, customer programs and operations.’

[Circle] didn’t elaborate on what the SEC’s investigation was focused on, [however] the subpoena arrived one month after Circle began onboarding corporate USDC holders into its first high-interest yield product, Circle Yield.

It’s not the firm’s first disclosed run-in with the SEC as it prepares to go public in a special purpose acquisition company deal that values the company at $4.5 billion.”

See Also: The US Inches Closer to Stablecoin Rules

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“Credit Suisse is taking part in the tokenization of a Swiss resort using the Ethereum blockchain. The law in Switzerland was updated in February to allow tokenized securities to trade on a blockchain with the same legal standing as traditional assets.

What’s interesting is that this project is also making a private placement, i.e. capital increase, based on tokenized securities, with the objective to provide secondary market trading.

The shares will begin to trade on the Taurus Digital Exchange (TDX) in the first quarter of next year to provide liquidity to Alaïa investors and employees. Earlier this year, Taurus received a license from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority to run a marketplace for digital assets.”

See Also: Altair Upgrade Set to Activate on Ethereum Mainnet This Month

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“THORSwap is the first multi-chain exchange using the THORChain protocol. This means that it allows users to swap tokens, for example, BTC for ETH, in one step without using an intermediary like a centralized exchange.

THORSwap currently only offers coins that are supported by THORChain, including BTC, LTC, ETH (and ERC-20 tokens) and BNB, but it is looking to integrate more coins outside of THORChain’s liquidity. Two networks of interest are 1inch and 0x.

Multi-chain solutions are said to be a game-changer by many people in the industry, with Arc Managing Director David Nage calling it the “actualization of free markets.”

Unlocking cross-chain liquidity will be critical to the future of decentralized finance.”

See Also: Blockstream’s Liquid Network Faces Delay in Processing as Transactions Begin to Stack Up

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“While very similar in look and feel to popular blogging platform Medium, Mirror shakes things up with an array of crypto-native features and capabilities. It’s a decentralized protocol that lets users log in and “sign” posts with an Ethereum wallet, plus it uses blockchain-based storage protocol Arweave to “permanently” back up posts and boost their censorship resistance.

Over the past several months, Mirror has added various crypto-centric economic elements to enable monetization for users, unlocking the ability to offer NFT collectibles, hold auctions, and even launch crowdfunding campaigns.

In April, the writer Emily Segal funded her next novel on Mirror. In July, the creators of an upcoming documentary film about Ethereum raised $1.9 million worth of ETH through a Mirror crowdfunding drive. In particular, Mirror has become a popular tool for DAOs, or decentralized autonomous organizations. DAO communities largely live within Discord servers, so Mirror provides a decentralized way to publicly share long-form information.

Mirror also shared a list of features coming to the platform in the future, including subscriptions, blog feeds and discovery elements, a richer editing platform, and support for Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain-like names.”