Coindesk

Ripple Labs and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have jointly requested a pause in their respective appeals to finalize a potential settlement, per a motion filed on Thursday.The filing signals a possible end to a high-profile dispute that has gripped the payments upstart industry since December 2020 for its sale of XRP tokens, which the SEC alleged were unregistered securities.The case has been a focal point for debates over the regulatory status of cryptocurrencies in the United States, with Ripple arguing that XRP is a currency, not a security, and thus outside the SEC’s jurisdiction.Ripple and the SEC have reached an “agreement in principle” to resolve all outstanding issues, per a post shared by attorney James Filan. This...

U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is under fire from Senate Democrats following his recent decision to narrow the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) crypto enforcement priorities and disband its crypto enforcement squad.In a Thursday letter to Blanche, six Senate Democrats — Sens. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I), Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) — blasted his decision to cut the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) as “giv a free pass to cryptocurrency money launderers.”The Senators called Blanche’s directive that DOJ staff no longer pursue cases against crypto exchanges, mixers or offline wallets “for the acts of their end users” or bring criminal charges for regulatory violations in cases involving crypto, including violations of...

With a signature from President Donald Trump, the decentralized financial (DeFi) corner of the crypto sector is now freed from U.S. Internal Revenue Service demands that such platforms be treated as brokers and required to track and report user activity.That narrowly focused IRS rule, approved in the final days of former President Joe Biden's administration, has been formally struck down, according to Representative Mike Carey, an Ohio Republican who backed the effort. And the agency is prevented from pursuing anything like it, according to the Congressional Review Act power used by lawmakers to get rid of the tax regulation.Though the issue was relatively limited, its completion marks the first time a pro-crypto effort has cleared the U.S. Congress.Both the Senate...

Nova Labs, the parent company behind the Helium blockchain, has agreed to pay the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) $200,000 to settle civil securities fraud charges the regulator filed against the firm in January, a court filing said Thursday.Without admitting or denying any wrongdoing, Nova Labs agreed to pay the fine to settle accusations that it misled institutional investors during a funding round from late 2021 to early 2022, during which it raised $200 million in fresh capital at a $1 billion valuation. In its complaint, the SEC accused Nova Labs of lying to prospective investors about a number of big-name enterprise customers — including Nestle, Salesforce and Lime — it claimed were using the Helium technology.The SEC accused...

Crypto companies issuing or dealing with tokens that may be securities should provide detailed disclosures, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said on Thursday.The SEC published its latest staff statement on disclosures ahead of its second roundtable — which will focus on trading — "as part of an effort to provide greater clarity on the application of the federal securities laws to crypto assets."The nonbinding guidance recommends companies filing disclosures be precise about what their businesses do and what role their tokens may play in those ventures. Much of it is based on observations about what companies have previously disclosed, the statement said. The statement did not delve deeply into which cryptocurrencies are being defined as securities or what...