Regulation

South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, UpBit, faces criminal charges after top executives were formally indicted by the country’s legal prosecutors, as reported by Business Korea on December 21, 2018. Three senior exchange executives, including founder Song Chi-Hyung, were arrested...

Two congressmen are introducing a bill that would exclude digital currencies from securities classification and substantially improve the tax treatment for cryptocurrencies. The new definition could benefit current cryptocurrency projects—such as Ripple’s XRP—and allow for ICOs and STOs to...

In France, several proposed changes to the laws governing the tax treatment of cryptocurrencies were rejected in the parliament on December 17th. The proposals would have made the tax treatment for transacting in cryptocurrencies more advantageous. The decision comes...

In just the last few months, the SEC has brought successful enforcement actions against EtherDelta, Paragon, Airfox, DJ Khaled and “Money” Mayweather himself, all predicated directly or indirectly on unregistered Initial Coin Offerings (“ICOs”). These settlements confirm that the...

Iran’s Public Relations and Information Center for the Vice Presidency for Science and Technology suggest interest in blockchain by encouraging improvements to “the infrastructure of blockchain technology with the help of [the] government and private sector.” This latest move...

Hong Kong is tightening its regulatory grip on cryptocurrency exchanges and related businesses by bringing them under the purview of the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), as reported by Asia Nikkei Review on Dec. 17. Crypto-Financial Center While part of...

The Swiss State Secretariat for International Finance (SIF) announced the Federal Council’s adoption of a recent report—Legal Framework for Distributed Ledger Technology and Blockchain in Switzerland—and expressed their intent to assist in developing laws for new technologies, specifically distributed...

In order to curb the use of cryptocurrencies for malicious activities such as money laundering and the funding of terrorism, the central bank of Netherlands, De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), has decided that it would be issuing licenses to cryptocurrency...

China’s central and largest bank by market capitalization has officially banned all security token offerings (STO) and any related investment and businesses involved in the practice. STOs Face Government Wrath As reported by the South China Morning Post on...

There is a distinct division around blockchain-related regulation in the United States, especially when it comes to state-level regulation. The spectrum ranges from conservative New York to progressive Ohio. In the U.S. today, two main positions from a regulatory...