The Disrupt

“Speaking Thursday at the Milken Institute Future of Digital Assets Symposium, Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) said he intends to work with the House Agriculture Committee on creating legislation for cryptocurrency. U.S. Representative French Hill is the chairman of the newly formed Financial Services Subcommittee on Digital Assets.

We’re going to do our best to work in tandem with House Ag on this process.”

See Also: Regulators Are Bringing the Multichain Era to a Close
See Also: Was Silvergate on Borrowed Time as Regulators Backed Banks Away From Crypto?

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“The letter to the Federal Reserve and other U.S. banking agencies criticized the SEC’s move last year – known as Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 – as a measure that could ‘deny millions of Americans access to safe and secure custodial arrangements for digital assets,’ because it would force regulated banks to reject crypto custody as something that comes with major capital demands.

A recent decision in the Celsius bankruptcy, which classified all Celsius’ customers as unsecured creditors, and therefore at the back of the line to recover their assets, highlights the legal risk of effectively forcing customer custodial assets to be placed on balance sheet.

The letter questioned the banking agencies on what interactions they’ve had with the SEC on this point, and whether the securities regulator’s position conflicts with their own policies.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell already said last year that the central bank was evaluating the SEC’s directive, which – for digital assets – changes longstanding practice that customers’ assets would be kept off a financial firm’s balance sheet.“

See Also: SEC Chair Gensler Says Crypto Exchanges May Not Be ‘Qualified Custodians’

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“The securities regulator said the $1.02 billion deal should be blocked because Voyager’s token could constitute an unregistered security.

Wiles, who is with the Southern District Bankruptcy Court in New York, said he was “absolutely shocked” at the SEC’s objection, saying it was asking Voyager to prove a negative with little guidance from the regulator.

I get the feeling that this objection has been made as a kind of cover, so you can say later that we’ll see we raised these issues. You haven’t really, you have done nothing.

William Uptegrove, representing the SEC, said that creditors had not been sufficiently warned of regulatory risks, but declined to take a definitive position on whether VGX was a security.

Counsel for Voyager told the court that the deal could see creditors achieving 73% recovery, a revision upward thanks to the recently bullish crypto market. Court filings show that 97% of its customers, representing 98% of total claims, had voted in favor of the deal.”

See Also: Binance a ‘Hotbed of Illegal Financial Activity,’ U.S. Senators Claim

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“A coming offering from ForUsAll will allow employees to allot part of their 401(k) investments directly into the 28 constituents of the CoinDesk Market Select Index (CMIS). This is the first index-based digital asset offering available on a 401(k) platform in the U.S.

By leveraging CMIS, we can provide sophisticated self-directed investors access to a broad, diversified universe of the largest and most liquid crypto assets.”

See Also: Russian bank issues first on-chain bank guarantee in Chinese yuan

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“Ethereum developers are targeting March 14 for the Goerli test network (testnet) to run through the Shanghai upgrade, the much-anticipated move to enable withdrawals of staked ether (ETH) from the blockchain.

The test on Goerli is going to be highly watched, given that it is the largest public Ethereum testnet and the last chance for staking providers to make sure that staked ETH is withdrawable before Shanghai reaches the mainnet.

All that will be left after the Goerli test is for Ethereum developers to set the date for mainnet. Earlier this week, the Sepolia testnet went through Shapella, and everything ran smoothly.”

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“The platform is intended to act as a common layer for browsing and discovering Web 3 products including crypto exchanges, non-fungible token (NFT) galleries and social networks. The framework will be compatible with all blockchains (currently supporting Near Protocol and Ethereum Virtual Machine chains) and Near will act as the common entry point.

We are moving away from our layer 1 focus, it’s now about the user and the experience they have. We are looking at this as the frontend for blockchains in general.

In the future we will be offering [use of] wallets from one chain to interact with another via seamless bridging. The BOS creates a single point of entry.”

See Also: Jack Dorsey’s Block Launches Service Provider to Make Lightning More Reliable

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“Using the latest spot prices, $2.2 billion of total assets have been identified in the wallets of the accounts associated with FTX.com, of which only $694 million constitute the most liquid “Category A Assets” that include fiat, stablecoins, bitcoin or ether.

Other assets include $385 million of customer receivables, and significant claims against FTX sister company Alameda Research and related parties. The presentation also shows a $9.3 billion net borrowing by Alameda from the FTX.com wallets and accounts.

According to the presentation, FTX’s team identified $7 billion in customer payables in cash and stablecoins, offset by $580 million in identified assets as of its petition date.”