#regulation

In 2018, Telegram raised $1.7 billion through an ICO in exchange for the future delivery of 2.9 billion Gram tokens to 175 investors. While Grams could realistically be sold with a premium on the secondary market, Telegram argued that the agreement was in line with the definition of a private placement of securities that is […]

March 24, the New York Southern District Court has preliminarily halted the transfer of Gram tokens to the primary investors of TON. Thus, the court ruled in favor of the U.S. SEC and recognized Gram non-registered security.

On March 4th, the Supreme Court of India ruled against the Reserve Bank of India’s decision to ban the country’s banks from dealing with digital currencies. The next day, on March 5th, the South Korean authorities have effectively legalized cryptocurrencies.

The phrase “made in Germany” represents high-quality products all around the world. When it comes to heavy industry and automobiles, Germany is in a leading position, but how is the country positioned with regard to the emerging technology of cryptocurrencies?

As the recent news has it, the SEC rejected the last application for a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund it had to review. There are no more applications pending, and it seems the Commission isn’t going to make Bitcoin ETFs happen, at least soon.

Russian Central Bank has approved the digital platform of Norilsk Nickel for trading tokens backed by commodities. On February 17, the Central Bank confirmed that the platform’s testing was successfully completed. It took place in the regulator’s own “sandbox.”

On February 11th, the UK’s FCA has blocked the operation of ePayments due to the company’s failure to comply with AML requirements. Pursuant to the regulator’s request, ePayments froze nearly a million customer accounts. 

On February 12th, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is going to release new cryptocurrency regulations with “significant new requirements” regarding crypto.

The notion that Bitcoin is instrumental for criminals is one of the traditional arguments against it and other cryptocurrencies. But however popular is the argument, Bitcoin’s potential for criminal use should be seen in context.

Libra made a lot of news over the last year. Surely, an arguably promising project developed and promoted by none other than Facebook was guaranteed to draw attention. Apparently, it was also a serious threat to the existing monetary system, so the project faced fierce opposition from regulators around the world.

Telegram has been litigating with the SEC for a while now. The main question of the case is whether the sale of Gram tokens by Telegram’s TON platform is a transaction of securities. Whatever the court ruling will be, it is likely to create a significant precedent for the entire crypto-industry to deal with. 

Ukrainian legislators are working on regulations for the crypto-industry. The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (the country’s parliament) will hear the tax law amendments that will include the definition of cryptocurrencies. The Ministry of Digital Transformation, which is tasked with the creation of the “state in a smartphone,” is now collaborating with Binance to reach its […]