It’s an unfortunate habit, but federal agencies tend to announce enforcement actions and rulemakings at the end of the day on Fridays, especially Fridays before a holiday. For crypto, last...
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Senate Attaches Controversial Crypto Sanctions Bill to Must-Pass Intelligence Legislation
A version of the Terrorist Finance Prevention Act (TFPA) has been attached to a must-pass intelligence authorization bill in the Senate. We have not written about the TFPA before because,...
DOJ’s New Stance on Crypto Wallets is a Threat to Liberty and the Rule of Law
It has been the clear and consistent policy of the U.S. government since at least 2013 that cryptocurrency wallet developers and the users of those wallets are not money transmitters....
This week, the U.S. Department of the Treasury sent a letter to the heads of the Senate Banking and House Financial Services Committees following a briefing on how Hamas and...
It’s time to have the conversation: Is the Bank Secrecy Act unconstitutional?
Today we’re publishing another report on the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) entitled “Broad, Ambiguous, or Delegated: Constitutional Infirmities of the Bank Secrecy Act.” In our 2019 report, “Electronic Cash, Decentralized...
There’s a centuries-old standard that tells us when regulation of crypto is justified
Today Coin Center submitted a comment letter in the Treasury Department’s ongoing rulemaking on the definition of “broker” for third-party tax reporting purposes. In brief, we argue that the definition...
Late last month the Treasury Department published a proposed regulation to define when a person in crypto qualifies as a “broker” under the tax code and therefore must collect personal...
New Tornado Cash indictments seem to run counter to FinCEN guidance
Roman Storm and Roman Semenov have been indicted for, among other charges, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. We don't have all the facts but at first blush...
When does a sanction become a seizure? Lessons from the KindHearts case
While researching case law for our Tornado Cash challenge I came across a very interesting holding, KindHearts v. Geithner, that deals with the intersection of the Office of Foreign Assets...
The CANSEE Act is a messy, arbitrary, and unconstitutional approach to DeFi
Yesterday Senators Reed, Rounds, Warner, and Romney introduced the Crypto-Asset National Security Enhancement (CANSEE) Act in the Senate. This bill comes as a surprise as it was apparently developed without...