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Rosetta is an open-source specification and set of tools that purports to make integrating with blockchains simpler, faster, and more reliable. For developers of new blockchain projects, the Rosetta interface makes it easier to ensure compatibility with exchanges that use Rosetta, and can dramatically speed up the time it takes exchanges to integrate with new blockchains and protect customer funds by ensuring specific security conditions are met. For the broader community of crypto developers, Rosetta makes it easier to build cross-blockchain applications such as block explorers, wallets and dapps.

Coinbase's Visa debit card offering has added support for ethereum-based DAI stablecoin.

Facebook's Novi launched its retail payment app yesterday (October 19) going with Paxos' USDP stablecoin as its transactional currency while it awaits regulatory approval for its own Diem stablecoin. However, almost immediately, US Senate Democrats addressed a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg questioning the company's credibility with crypto, and calling for the immediate discontinuance of the Novi pilot and a commitment not to bring Diem to market. Diem replied by clarifying that Diem is an independent organization with Facebook's Novi being just one of more than two dozen members of the Diem Association, so that Novi's pilot with Paxos is unrelated to Diem. The response went on to say that "When Diem comes to market [Diem] will do so having reflected the feedback of regulators from around the world and with confidence that Diem's payment system is secure, will protect consumers, and will combat financial crime."

In denying stablecoin issuer Terraform Labs' motion to dismiss a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit, Judge Jed Rakoff, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected the use of a ruling from fellow Judge Analisa Torres, who recently ruled that Ripple Labs - another defendant against the SEC - did not violate securities law in making XRP available on secondary platforms for retail investors to purchase. Rakoff rejected Torres' distinction between institutional sales and sales to retail investors on crypto exchanges, which he characterized as a misinterpretation of the Howey test used to determine if an asset is a security. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.594150/gov.uscourts.nysd.594150.51.0.pdf

BlackRock launched a new private spot Bitcoin (BTC) trust. The fund is only available to U.S. institutional investors and seeks to track the performance of Bitcoin, less the expenses and liabilities of the trust. Private investment trusts that do not solicit investments from retail investors do not need to register with regulatory authorities in the United States. But others, such as the Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust, can still become publicly traded (though not SEC-registered) on the over-the-counter markets.

Adam Levitin considers what would happen to customers' custodial holdings if a crypto-asset exchange in the United States were to fail. U.S. law gives substantial protection to the custodial holdings of securities, commodities, or cash deposits by securities or commodities brokers or banks, but no such regime exist for custodial holdings of crypto-assets. Instead, bankruptcy courts are likely to deem the custodial holdings to be property of the bankrupt exchange, rather than of its customers. The customers would merely be general unsecured creditors of the exchange, entitled only to a pro rata distribution of the exchange's residual assets after any secured or priority creditors had been repaid.