• Treasury delays cold wallet monitoring
    Will Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen follow through on predecsessor Steven Mnuchin's cold wallet monitoring plan? (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
    Regulation

    Good and bad: Treasury delays cold wallet monitoring rule

    The delay gives crypto more time to fight it, but shows that regulators plan to press ahead in the new administration

    January 26, 2021 /

    Proposed on Dec. 18, the regulation would require exchanges to collect personal know-your-customer data from private or “unhosted” cold wallets on the sending or receiving end of transactions of more than $3,000. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) originally gave the proposal a very unusual 15-day comment period, which included the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

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  • Crypto breather FinCEN regulation
    Will incoming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen be a better friend to crypto than Steven Mnuchin? (Photo: C-SPAN)
    Cryptocurrencies,  Regulation

    Crypto gets breather from FinCEN’s last-minute unhosted wallet regulation

    President Joe Biden’s regulation freeze stops FinCEN from rushing through a ‘midnight rule’ collecting personal data from private wallets

    January 20, 2021 /

    Outgoing Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin caused an outcry on Dec. 18, when the department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network announced the new rule requiring banks, cryptocurrency exchanges, and other money services businesses to collect know-your-customer (KYC) data about anyone who wants to transfer $3,000 or more to or from an “unhosted” wallet.

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  • a16z promises FinCEN rule court challenge
    Did Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin drop a midnight rule or a Christmas rule on crypto? (Photo: Whitehouse.gov)
    Regulation

    Opposition to FinCEN crypto rule grows after a16z promises court challenge

    The industry plans to fight a proposed regulation requiring U.S. exchanges to collect personal data from private wallet-holders

    January 6, 2021 /

    Major United States-based crypto exchanges Coinbase and Kraken, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s fintech Square, and financial services giant Fidelity are among the firms that recently filed comments with the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network strongly opposing the proposed new rules.

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  • What's next for bitcoin
    Will bitcoin take the high road or the low road heading into 2021? (Photo:Wikimedia Commons)
    Bitcoin,  Ethereum

    What’s next for Bitcoin?

    Two things could drive Bitcoin’s price up—or down—in the final weeks of 2020

    December 16, 2020 /

    Bitcoin is now in unchartered territory, and prices have never been this high. But this bull run is different. Institutions are pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the world’s biggest cryptocurrency—and there’s no sign of this appetite abating. You could argue that the biggest danger to BTC’s dramatic surge is the holiday season, when some traders will start logging off for Christmas and New Years. As weekends often spark volatility in the Bitcoin markets, the low trading volumes mean first cryptocurrency is prone to dramatic surges and painful pullbacks.

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