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(Bloomberg) -- In the crackdown on decentralized finance, regulators should assume power is anything but dispersed. "There is a common misconception that DeFi is truly decentralized and governed by autonomous code or smart contracts", said Tuang Lee Lim, chair of IOSCO's board-level fintech task force, said in a statement. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Kraken's crypto derivatives unit plans to expand its services, targeting a market void left by the collapse of former rival FTX. Read more: Crypto Market-Making Margins Sink 30% in Post-FTX "Wake-Up Call" Kraken bought Crypto Facilities in 2019, with the unit later gaining permission to custody cryptoassets under a separate registration with the FCA in 2021. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- In a year when it has seemed as if US officials were hell-bent on putting much of the cryptocurrency market out of commission, the beaten-down digital-asset industry has finally scored a big legal win. The court's decision leaves "no doubt" that spot Bitcoin ETFs are coming to the market, probably in the first quarter of 2024, Tim Bevan, CEO at crypto exchange-traded product provider ETC Group, said in an email. The potential total market for spot Bitcoin ETFs could be somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 billion, similar to the amount of assets in gold ETFs, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas. [Extracted from the article]

Crypto's Latest Craze Friend.tech Is Overrun by Bots, "Speculative Games" Read more: Crypto Wants to Save Social Media But so far, friend.tech has turned out to be subject to the same speculative mania that often tails new crypto projects, making it more like Dogecoin than a vibrant social-media platform. And those same bots that drove the spike in transactions on friend.tech are contributing most to the platform's subsequent downturn, according to 21.co's Tom Wan. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Copper Technologies Ltd.'s chief marketing officer is leaving the company a little over a year after he was appointed, marking the latest departure from the London-based crypto custodian's top ranks. A Copper spokesperson said Goode was hired to lead a rebrand of the firm, which was now complete. [Extracted from the article]

And even as Bitcoin has recovered smartly from last year's lows, many investors are still sitting out, depriving the market of the breadth and depth that are key ingredients for a sustained bull run. (Bloomberg) -- Bitcoin has had a sleepy summer. [Extracted from the article]

The London-based fintech firm will suspend US users' ability to buy cryptocurrencies via its app from September 2, a Revolut spokesperson said in an email on Friday. (Bloomberg) -- British banking app Revolut Ltd. will stop offering crypto trading services to US-based customers from September, citing market uncertainty and changes to the local regulatory landscape. Its US banking partner is Metropolitan Commercial Bank, according to a notice on Revolut's website, while crypto services are provided by Bakkt Holdings Inc.'s Apex Crypto unit. [Extracted from the article]

French prosecutors have also kicked off an investigation into the firm for aggravated money laundering, while Binance and its chief executive Changpeng Zhao face lawsuits from US regulators. (Bloomberg) -- Binance has withdrawn an application to register with the German financial regulator, marking the latest European regulatory setback faced by the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Robinhood Markets Inc. has appointed a new chief executive to run its UK entity, as the US stock-trading app pushes ahead with the latest attempt to launch its services overseas. Read more: Robinhood Plans UK Hires in Bid to Target Local Investors Sinclair was most recently a managing director for Europe at local retail stock-trading app Freetrade, according to Sky News, which first reported his appointment. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Wall Street activity in the battle to provide custody services for the more than trillion-dollar digital-asset market is heating up rapidly, and in surprising ways, turning what would typically be considered a sleepy area of finance into one of the most lively sectors. Nasdaq Inc. last week said it's halting plans to launch its own cryptoasset custodian, citing a lack of business opportunities and an uncertain regulatory backdrop. [Extracted from the article]

The original case is Securities and Exchange Commission v Terraform Labs, PTE. (Bloomberg) -- Terraform Labs Pte. requested permission from a judge to subpoena information from collapsed crypto empire FTX, saying the data would aid the failed stablecoin issuer in its defense against fraud charges levied by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. [Extracted from the article]

Societe Generale Forge was designated a digital asset service provider, or DASP, by France's Autorité des Marchés Financiers on Tuesday, according to the regulator's website. (Bloomberg) -- Societe Generale's blockchain unit received the first license issued under France's new crypto rules, ramping up the investment bank's expansion into digital assets. [Extracted from the article]

While the British Virgin Islands-incorporated firm bought the rights to TUSD from stablecoin operator Archblock in late 2020, it had continued to employ Archblock to run the project on its behalf. (Bloomberg) -- TrueUSD, a relatively obscure stablecoin that's been rising in popularity since signing a lucrative deal with crypto exchange Binance Holdings Ltd. earlier this year, will be fully controlled by its owners after a management deal ended. [Extracted from the article]

A retail-trading boom in companies that were popular on social media during the coronavirus pandemic, known as the meme stock craze, led to several trading outfits becoming venture capital targets. (Bloomberg) -- Commission-free investing platform Public.com is launching in the UK, marking the Robinhood rival's first expansion outside its American home market. Robinhood itself attempted several unsuccessful launches in the country since 2019, most recently via the now-scrapped acquisition of London-based crypto trading firm Ziglu. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Issuers of stablecoins should take immediate measures to comply with new European Union crypto regulations that come into effect a year from now, the European Banking Authority said. Under EU rules, assets like Circle Internet Financial Ltd.'s USDC that use a reserve denominated in a single currency are considered electronic money tokens. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Polygon Labs, the main software developer behind the namesake blockchain project, is reorganizing its leadership team, including appointing a new chief executive officer. The reshuffle comes a month after the US Securities and Exchange Commission said it considered Polygon's native token to be a security. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Gemini Trust Co., the digital-asset exchange founded by the billionaire Winklevoss brothers, filed a lawsuit against Digital Currency Group Inc. and its chief executive officer Barry Silbert, alleging "fraud and deception" stemming from a failed lending venture between the two firms. Gemini said in the lawsuit that it was seeking to recover "damages and losses" the crypto exchange incurred "as direct result of DCG's and Silbert's false, misleading, and incomplete representations and omissions to Gemini.". [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Crypto exchange Bitfinex said it worked with authorities to recover about $315,000 in cash and cryptocurrencies stolen in a 2016 attack on its platform. The US Department of Homeland Security recovered the funds as part of an ongoing prosecution of individuals connected to the hack, British Virgin Islands-based Bitfinex said in a statement on Thursday. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc. is reviewing its digital-assets custody partnership with Swiss fintech firm Metaco and has started informal talks with other providers, people with knowledge of the matter said. Custody became a hot topic in the crypto industry after the failure of several prominent firms last year, including Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX, left millions of investors with assets stuck. When announcing its partnership with Metaco last June, Citi said the companies would explore how to custody assets like traditional securities. [Extracted from the article]

"Following a strategic review, we have taken the decision to cease offering our embedded wallet solution to Binance across the region", London-based Paysafe said in an emailed statement. (Bloomberg) -- Binance Holdings Ltd. will lose access to euro-denominated bank transfers to and from its cryptocurrency exchange via banking partner Paysafe Ltd., the latest in a recent string of blows to its business in Europe. [Extracted from the article]

All tokens available to buy or sell directly with dollars on Binance.US were trading at a discount compared to other exchanges, data collated by blockchain analytics firm Kaiko showed on Wednesday. Binance.US is meant to be the only way that Americans can interact with the company, blocked from trading on the international Binance.com venue which the firm says operates separately from the US entity. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Julius Baer is expanding its crypto wealth management services in Dubai, marking the firm's first major digital-assets push beyond the borders of its native Switzerland. Julius Baer views the United Arab Emirates as a "key geography", the bank's head of digital assets development Jonathan Hayes said in an interview, citing increased economic development in the region. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- The UK must develop laws that govern cryptoassets to ensure the country becomes a global hub for cryptocurrencies and non fungible tokens, the Law Commission recommended. The UK Treasury announced its ambition to become a global crypto hub in April last year, launching a spate of legislative proposals to regulate cryptoasset businesses and attract investment to the country. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- A digital pound developed by the Bank of England could end up running on software that is not a blockchain, the distributed database technology underpinning cryptocurrencies and other digital coins issued by central banks. The Bank plans to trial several different versions of ledgers, including public blockchains similar to those underpinning cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, to see which option might work best for a UK CBDC. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- As Binance Holdings Ltd. comes under fire from regulators and industry participants, a relatively obscure stablecoin is playing a key role in the largest crypto exchange's push to move past its recent turmoil. TrueUSD, also known as TUSD, is the only stablecoin not branded by the world's largest exchange where traders don't have to pay a fee when swapping between cryptocurrencies on Binance's trading platform. Obscure structure TrueUSD is operated by Archblock, a San Francisco-headquartered firm with offices in Ireland and Poland. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- London-headquartered Molten Ventures Plc de-valued its holdings in digital finance companies Ledger and Revolut Ltd., signaling venture capital firms are becoming more cautious toward technology startups and the crypto sector. The fair value of Molten's investment in crypto wallet maker Ledger was calculated at £71.8 million ($91.5 million) as of March 2023, the venture capital firm said in its annual report on Thursday, down 22% from its 2022 value of £91.9 million. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Tether Holdings Ltd.'s USDT, the world's largest stablecoin, deviated slightly from its peg to the US dollar on Thursday as a crypto market signal suggested some investors were offloading the token. Since the slide from its dollar peg began on Thursday morning, USDT has lost around $278 million in circulation - an indicator that investors are also redeeming USDT tokens, beyond swapping them on Curve's 3pool. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Crypto exchange Binance Holdings Ltd. applied to strike its local Cypriot entity off the country's register of authorized digital asset service providers, saying it planned to refocus its efforts elsewhere in the European Union. The register monitors cryptoasset companies for compliance with Cyprus's anti-money laundering rules. [Extracted from the article]

While US regulators view Bitcoin as a commodity, SEC Chair Gary Gensler has long said most other tokens are subject to the agency's investor-protection laws and that trading platforms should register with the regulator. The SEC accused Binance and its founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao of mishandling customer funds, misleading investors and regulators, and breaking securities rules. (Bloomberg) -- A sharp weekend selloff in crypto led by a slump in smaller digital tokens set off a fresh wave of anxiety among investors, following a week in which a crackdown by the US Securities and Exchange Commission on the sector gained significant pace. [Extracted from the article]

The SEC subsequently said on Tuesday that it's seeking to freeze Binance.US's assets and protect customer funds, including through the repatriation of client investments held abroad. (Bloomberg) -- Crypto exchange Binance.US is being thrown deeper into disarray, as banking partners prepare to rescind support, liquidity dries up and traders withdraw tokens from the platform while US regulators clamp down on the company and its owner. [Extracted from the article]

Cross River Cross River Bank, a Fort Lee, New Jersey-based firm known for its ties to financial-technology firms, has provided banking services to some crypto firms, such as Coinbase and Circle. The Zug-based bank saw increased website traffic globally, but more so in the US, after the collapse of Signature and Silvergate, the company said in March, adding that crypto firms were applying for its accounts. (Bloomberg) -- Two months after the collapse of Silvergate Capital Corp. and Signature Bank, a new banking landscape for crypto companies is taking shape amid an expanding crackdown on the industry in the US. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- In 2019, Catherine Coley became the first chief executive of Binance.US, a crypto exchange that shares its name with the world's largest digital assets trading platform Binance Holdings Ltd. Two years later, she stepped down suddenly and has been little heard from or seen since. Read more: Binance.US Tech Work Is Parceled to a Crew in Shanghai (1) Brooks also gave testimony to the SEC. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Schroders Plc is seeking to hire a third-party custodian for cryptocurrencies, people with knowledge of the matter said, as the £738 billion ($916 billion) asset manager prepares an expansion into digital assets. While Schroders doesn't currently have any direct exposure to cryptocurrency, the London-based firm took a step into the sector in July last year when it bought a minority stake in digital-asset manager Forteus. [Extracted from the article]

Read more: SEC Sues Binance and CEO Zhao for Breaking US Securities Rules Binance still handles more trading than all other top centralized crypto exchanges combined, yet never has its position seemed so precarious. (Bloomberg) -- In mid-May, cryptocurrency exchange Binance got some bad news in a far-flung corner of its sprawling universe. [Extracted from the article]

From at least September 2019 until June 2022, a Swiss-incorporated trading firm owned by Binance founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao called Sigma Chain allegedly engaged in "wash trading", making it seem like many more tokens were changing hands on Binance.US than actually were. The SEC also accuses Binance of illegally allowing high-profile US companies to trade on Binance.com and of commingling customer assets between its US and non-US entities, among other charges. A plan devised by an external consultant in 2018 suggested that Binance establish an entity that could become the scapegoat for all forthcoming regulatory enforcement actions that would undoubtedly follow in the US, which ultimately ended in the creation of Binance.US. [Extracted from the article]

The agreement promised that the OSC would not bring further investigations against Binance while it was seeking registration, the exchange said. (Bloomberg) -- Crypto exchange Binance Holdings Ltd. said it has received an order from one of Canada's securities regulators to investigate whether the platform attempted to find a way around local regulations and compliance controls while seeking approvals in the country. [Extracted from the article]

In the past, industry observers have raised questions over whether Tether's USDT was actually supported by enough reserves to justify the one-for-one peg claim, in addition to the quality of assets making up those reserves. (Bloomberg) -- Tether Holdings Ltd.'s stablecoin has recovered all of the roughly $20 billion in market value it lost following the collapse of algorithmic rival TerraUSD a little over a year ago. The firm's USDT stablecoin is pegged at one-to-one with the dollar, and maintains that value by supporting it with reserves of cash and cash-equivalent assets. [Extracted from the article]

A spokesperson for the OSC said the regulator will address the application later this week, without confirming whether Binance had complied with the summons as requested. (Bloomberg) -- Crypto exchange Binance Holdings Ltd. said it has received an order from one of Canada's securities regulators to investigate whether the platform attempted to find a way around local regulations and compliance controls while seeking approvals in the country. [Extracted from the article]

The firm had tried to expand into business areas that were not core to the company's strategy, Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik said in a statement posted on Twitter. (Bloomberg) -- Blockchain analytics platform Nansen said it is laying off 30% of its workforce, citing broader difficulties in the crypto market. [Extracted from the article]

The firm recently launched a derivatives exchange, Gemini Foundation, in a number of jurisdictions outside of the US, UK and European Union. Tiwana, who was also recently named Gemini's head of Asia-Pacific operations, has taken on many of the firm's responsibilities, said the people. (Bloomberg) -- Since going all-in on Bitcoin over a decade ago, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss have had their share of ups and downs. [Extracted from the article]

The rival bid from the Gemini-backed consortium group proposed spinning off Celsius's mining business as a publicly traded company wholly owned by creditors, and for remaining assets to go through a wind-down process. (Bloomberg) -- Failed crypto lender Celsius Network LLC is poised to restart as a new company after Fahrenheit LLC, a group of bidders led by investment firm Arrington Capital, won an auction to oversee its assets. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Failed crypto lender Celsius Network LLC is poised to restart as a new company after Fahrenheit LLC, a group of bidders led by investment firm Arrington Capital, won an auction for its assets. Fahrenheit vied for the remains of Celsius in an auction that was held as part of the lender's bankruptcy process, ultimately beating out rivals including Novawulf Digital Management and a consortium including crypto exchange Gemini Trust Co. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Crypto exchange OKX has applied for regulatory approval in France and plans to build out its European hub in Paris, making it the latest overseas crypto firm to pick the French capital as its base on the continent. Hong Fang, OKX's president, said the firm considered having operations in France to be "crucial" in its engagement with European regulators. [Extracted from the article]

Tyler Winklevoss, one of Gemini's billionaire co-founders alongside his brother Cameron, described the SEC's action as a "manufactured parking ticket", adding that the SEC had publicized its complaint before notifying Gemini. (Bloomberg) -- A derivatives exchange launched by crypto trading platform Gemini Trust Co. last month has allegedly been operating without authorization in one of its jurisdictions, the Philippines' Securities and Exchange Commission said in a warning to investors. [Extracted from the article]

Only profits realized on that $2.5 billion excess would be used to purchase Bitcoin, he added, as a means of ensuring its total Bitcoin holdings stay below its overall capital cushion. The company said on Wednesday that it does not expect the value of its current and future Bitcoin holdings to exceed its shareholder capital cushion, referring to excess capital held by Tether to protect against heavy losses. (Bloomberg) -- Tether Holdings Ltd., the operator of the largest stablecoin, will invest as much as 15% of profits on a regular basis in Bitcoin as part of a strategy to diversify its reserves. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Retail investing in unbacked cryptoassets like Bitcoin should be regulated like gambling because they are highly volatile and have "no intrinsic value", an influential panel of UK lawmakers said. Regulating retail cryptocurrency trading like gambling would also be a departure from how other major jurisdictions treat the asset class. "We are concerned that regulating retail trading and investment activity in unbacked cryptoassets as a financial service will create a "halo" effect that leads consumers to believe that this activity is safer than it is, or protected when it is not", the report said. [Extracted from the article]

Many crypto companies have said that major auditing firms are reluctant to engage with them, due in part to a perceived lack of experience with blockchain accounting and the crypto industry's history of scams and scandals. Crypto's Most Influential Companies Often Follow Their Own Rules - Even After FTX's Collapse Several firms, including crypto exchanges Binance and Bitfinex, said in their responses that Big Four accounting firms were either unwilling or unequipped to work with digital-asset companies like theirs. [Extracted from the article]

The London-based firm applied to strike off Nexo Financial Services Ltd. and Nexo Clearing and Custody Ltd. from the UK companies register, filings showed this month. (Bloomberg) -- Crypto lender Nexo is dissolving two of its UK-based entities as it faces a period of legal uncertainty elsewhere in Europe. [Extracted from the article]

Other Investments The amount of Tether's reserves held with money-market funds was largely unchanged quarter-on-quarter at $7.5 billion, the attestation showed, while its holdings in cash and bank deposits fell significantly from $5.3 billion to just $481.4 million. Its profit figures are not included in the attestation, and a Tether spokesperson didn't immediately respond to a request for clarification on how its net income had increased by such a margin. [Extracted from the article]

Tether attributed the jump in profit from the previous quarter to a surge in circulation and rising income from the $82 billion of reserves backing its stablecoin USDT. (Bloomberg) -- Tether Holdings Ltd., the operator of the largest stablecoin, said it recorded a first-quarter profit of $1.5 billion, more than double the forecast the company gave in late March. [Extracted from the article]