The panel’s chairman, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), has considered stablecoin legislation a priority since last year, before he took over the committee. When he won the gavel, he continued the work, though Democrats had complained that Republicans were re-writing the bill without their input. They later released their own version. The narrow scope of the bill and its past bipartisan support had been the strengths of the effort to date, but it’s not yet clear what Democrats think of the latest version.

Speaking on the “Unchained” podcast, Tarun Chitra, the CEO of Gauntlet, suggested that outflows have been slow because users globally, like your average hodler in Chile or Abu Dhabi, simply are not concerned about what’s happening with Binance and the U.S. For many, Binance is the most trustworthy option when it comes to crypto exchanges, which is why it has grown to be the largest crypto exchange, and by a longshot. The accusations against the company and its chief executive are gross, but that doesn’t mean you suddenly trust your small-time, domestic crypto exchange any more.

To execute the deal with JP Morgan, ConsenSys crafted a plan called Project NorthStar, designed in concert with the Swiss office of consulting giant PwC. Project NorthStar would call for the creation of a new Delaware C-corp called ConsenSys Software Inc (CSI) and the transfer of all major assets from the original Swiss company, ConsenSys AG (CAG), into the new entity. To determine the share of the new company that the original company would be awarded, ConsenSys had to arrive at a valuation of its core assets, which at the time consisted of Infura, Pegasus, Codefi, a 50% stake in Truffle and MetaMask, along with the company’s subsidiaries in Australia, France, the U.K., Hong Kong, Ireland, and the U.S.

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The leader in news and information on cryptocurrency, digital assets and the future of money, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups. As part of their compensation, certain CoinDesk employees, including editorial employees, may receive exposure to DCG equity in the form of stock appreciation rights, which vest over a multi-year period. CoinDesk journalists are not allowed to purchase stock outright in DCG.

The lawsuit, filed by former congressional staffer Joe Kent in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in October 2021, alleged the DeFi platform violated New York state’s gambling laws by “allowing people to evade financial regulations and scam consumers,” according to the original complaint. Kent, who previously worked for crypto skeptic Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), filed the suit as an apparent test case as legislators explored avenues to pursue legal actions against DeFi actors.

But the messaging surrounding the suits makes the SEC’s recent moves seem reactive, political and frankly, just beneath the bluster, weak. Specifically, the SEC seems to be trying to put Coinbase and Binance into the same bucket as the frauds of 2022, such as Luna, Celsius and above all FTX. The SEC has been widely viewed as giving FTX deferential treatment before it was revealed as a massive fraud, so now it’s demonstrating that it really can be a hard-nosed regulator – it’s just doing so a couple of years late, and to the wrong targets.

That being said, Whittemore imagines that in the Web3 space specifically, AI could be used to quickly summarize crypto-adjacent news. “CoinDesk is the destination website for a lot of people in Web3,” says Whittemore. But CoinDesk is not the destination for all business or financial news. So for areas outside of its core competence, why not use AI as a service to the readers? What happens to the S&P 500 is not exactly CoinDesk’s bailiwick, but it’s of interest to most in the space. So Bloomberg or Wall Street Journal articles could be summarized and then linked to by AI, says Whittemore, as these are “sort of orthogonal to their interests, but relevant.”

Ironically, permissionless decentralized applications (dapps) leave significant groups of users unable to participate. Regulated entities such as asset managers or allocators are generally not able to do business with “bad actors” (terrorists, financial criminals, etc.). In a completely permissionless environment, the participants are unknown, and, therefore, the “bad actor” risk cannot be addressed. Hence, know-your-customer (KYC) checks and the assessment of the potential money laundering risk are important steps to building trust in the digital asset ecosystem and broadening institutional adoption of Web3 opportunities.

Bitcoin (BTC) quickly bounced back after tumbling to a three-month low of less than $25,500 on Tuesday following news that Coinbase (COIN), had been sued by the U.S. Securities and Commission Exchange (SEC) on allegations of violating federal securities law. This followed a similar suit against Binance on Monday. Already on its heels following the Binance suit, bitcoin sank further on the Coinbase action before recovering throughout the day to again top $27,000. It’s retreated a bit overnight Wednesday to the current $26,800, still up 4% over the last 24 hours. “The price action is certainly encouraging and shows the market remains confident on the outlook for the space despite attempts to slow it down by way of a path to regulation that has been less than clear,” said LMAX Digital in a morning note. The Coinbase lawsuit also listed 13 tokens which could be deemed as securities, including Cardano’s ADA, and Polygon’s MATIC, both of which are down 5% over the past 24-hours.

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The leader in news and information on cryptocurrency, digital assets and the future of money, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups. As part of their compensation, certain CoinDesk employees, including editorial employees, may receive exposure to DCG equity in the form of stock appreciation rights, which vest over a multi-year period. CoinDesk journalists are not allowed to purchase stock outright in DCG.