Hodder Law Weekly Crypto Newsletter - September 20, 2022

Hello everyone,

I hope you are all having a great week! Michael Saylor just bought another 301 Bitcoin at an average price of $19,851, a 72% discount from last November's high of $69,044.

Hodder Law Firm Blog & HODLCast - Bitcoin Mining is worth the energy!

White House releases framework for crypto regulations

White House factsheet: Some chilling parts included beefing up the Bank Secrecy Act, anti-tip-off statutes, focusing on crypto exchanges, NFT platforms, and raising financial penalties for unlicensed money

SEC steps up plans to regulate crypto

Gensler was recently interviewed on Coindesk. He stated, “They don't just look like securities, they are securities. Whether they call them centralized or decentralized, they're transacting and providing services to the public. The vast number of these thousands of tokens - without prejudging any one of them - meet the standard of being a security, and thus the platforms have an obligation to come in and register."

Gensler has also stated in the past that Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency he is prepared to label as a commodity rather than a security.

SEC suing crypto advisory firms

The SEC is suing two crypto advisory firms and their owner, Gabriel Eldeman, for misleading at least four investors, targeting the elderly, and misappropriating $4.3 million between February 2017 and May 2021.

The SEC claims jurisdiction over the Ethereum PoS network

In a recent complaint against Ian Balina, the SEC claimed Ethereum’s fully under US jurisdiction because, according to paragraph 69, the majority (43% of 7819) nodes being run are from within the United States.

This argument, if uncontested, means any Eth transactions will be considered a domestic securities transaction.

Go Coinbase!

Coinbase employees and Ethereum backers sue U.S. Treasury over Tornado Cash Sanctions.

US Treasury has published FAQs, “While engaging in any transaction with Tornado Cash or its blocked property or interests in property is prohibited for U.S. persons, interacting with open-source code itself, in a way that does not involve a prohibited transaction with Tornado Cash, is not prohibited. For example, U.S. persons would not be prohibited by U.S. sanctions regulations from copying the open-source code and making it available online for others to view, as well as discussing, teaching about, or including open-source code in written publications, such as textbooks, absent additional facts. Similarly, U.S. persons would not be prohibited by U.S. sanctions regulations from visiting the Internet archives for the Tornado Cash historical website, nor would they be prohibited from visiting the Tornado Cash website if it again becomes active on the Internet.”

This is one of the most important court cases on the future direction of cryptocurrency and privacy in the United States that will have implications worldwide. One of the developers of Tornado Cash is in jail and several related GitHub accounts have been shut down.

Bitcoin is the best property!

Michael Saylor recently addressed the Australian Crypto Convention where he expressed his thoughts on why bitcoin is even better than holding physical property.

“If you have a property in Africa, no one's gonna want to rent it from you if they live in London. But if you have a billion dollars of Bitcoin, you can loan it or rent, to anybody in the world.”

Certainly, there are no maintenance costs or taxes imposed on bitcoin which is a huge advantage over owning property. And you can’t transfer property ownership over physical boundaries without complication as you can with bitcoin.

Saylor also quipped that royalty like King Charles are the only people with the liberty to pass down their wealth without it being taxed away. Bitcoin is a solution to that. He also expressed his reverence for the security of bitcoin by stating that it’s not been hacked for over 13 years and is “the most secure network in the world.”

FTX called out by UK Financial Conduct Authority

The FCA says FTX isn't authorized to offer financial services or products in the country. FTX has responded saying they believe a scammer is impersonating their company. All crypto firms operating in the UK legally are to join the crypto asset registry that meets the FCA anti-money laundering standards. Firms such as FTX and Binance are not part of that registry yet still operate in the UK. Source: Bloomberg.

Make it a great week!

Sincerely,

Sasha Hodder

Hodder Law

sasha@hodder.law

www.hodder.law