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The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a staff advisory on the risks associated with the expansion of Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO) clearing of digital assets. Noting the increased cyber and other risks that may be associated with digital assets, the CFTC expects DCOs and applicants to actively identify new, evolving, or unique risks and implement risk mitigation measures tailored to the risks that these products or clearing-structure changes may present.

Money facilitates business on the market by serving as a medium of exchange, store of value, and a unit of account. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis lists six characteristics of money: durability, portability, divisibility, limited supply, uniformity, and acceptability. The latter two of these attributes are directly impacted by a currency's fungibility. In order to satisfy Berg's (2020) fungibility criteria, "each unit of a currency, or any commodity used in a money function, should be indistinguishable from others of the same denomination," and "an individual unit of said currency should not be reidentifiable through time and change."

The United Arab Emirates Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) is reportedly getting ready to start issuing federal licenses to cryptocurrency service providers in the first quarter. The SCA will regulate the crypto industry with input from the central bank, but local financial centers can establish their own daily procedures around licensing.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) is coming closer to issuing its virtual asset regulatory and supervisory framework. It has also completed its consultation on developing the necessary regulatory framework to address the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing related to virtual assets and virtual asset service providers in the United Arab Emirates, in order to ensure that the virtual assets sector adheres to the recommendations and requirements of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

In a speech delivered today to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association Annual Meeting, U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler re-affirmed his view that most all crypto assets are securities. "Most crypto tokens involve a group of entrepreneurs raising money from the public in anticipation of profits - the hallmark of an investment contract or a security under our jurisdiction. Some, probably only a few, are like digital gold; thus, they might be like commodities. Even fewer, if any, are actually being used in general commerce for payments." He added that if a swap is based on crypto that is a security then it is a security-based swap that must be registered with the SEC. Gensler stated that whether the platform is centralized or decentralized, offering crypto assets and crypto asset-based swaps means they must "work within our securities regime."

"The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) on Wednesday reportedly unanimously voted to begin a project to review the accounting for exchange-traded digital assets and commodities."

"NFTs (non-fungible tokens) might be the most confusing commodity on the internet right now. At its most basic, an NFT is computer code that represents ownership of digital items. But what does that actually mean? And why are they suddenly exploding in value?"

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rejected the One River Carbon Neutral Bitcoin Trust spot Bitcoin Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) application filed by One River Asset Management for listing on the New York Stock Exchange Arca. According to the SEC, the application did not address the core concerns bordering on price manipulation noting that the company utilized the same standard used in its rejections of previous proposals to list bitcoin-based commodity trusts.

"New York State Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against crypto exchange Kucoin on Thursday for "failing to register as a securities and commodities broker-dealer and falsely representing itself as an exchange.""

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sued crypto exchange Binance and founder Changpeng Zhao on allegations the company knowingly offered unregistered crypto derivatives products in the U.S. against federal law. Zhao replied to the complaint and classified them as "unexpected" and "disappointing." The executive claims that the company has worked with the U.S. regulator since 2021. Zhao said: "upon an initial review, the complaint appears to contain an incomplete recitation of facts, and we do not agree with the characterization of many of the issues alleged in the complaint."

"The CFTC dropped a bomb on the world's largest offshore crypto casino on Monday. It's suing Binance and its founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao ("CZ") for violating US commodities trading laws. Samuel Lim, Binance's former chief compliance officer, was also charged with "willfully aiding and abetting" Binance's violations. "

Ethereum is days away from a pivotal upgrade that could lure billions of dollars into its native token. But Ether has already attracted the attention of US SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who says that cryptocurrencies like it ought to be regulated as securities. That's an opposing stance to CFTC Chair Rostin Behnam, who insists that Ether's a commodity. Ethereum's software upgrade next week has only raised the stakes in that debate. That's because the April 12 'Shanghai' update will allow users to withdraw Ether that they "staked" or deposited on the blockchain. The move follows Ethereum's long-awaited 'Merge' upgrade in September that initially allowed users to "stake" coins to earn passive income - much like fixed deposits at a bank. Now, Shanghai will allow them to take those coins out, plus any interest earned.

"New York Attorney General Letitia James today filed a lawsuit against Alex Mashinsky, a co-founder and former CEO of cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network LLC and its related entities (Celsius), for defrauding hundreds of thousands of investors, including more than 26,000 New Yorkers, out of billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency. The lawsuit alleges that Mashinsky repeatedly made false and misleading statements about Celsius's safety to encourage investors to deposit billions of dollars in digital assets onto the platform. As Celsius lost hundreds of millions of dollars of assets in risky investments, Mashinsky misrepresented and concealed Celsius's deteriorating financial condition. Mashinsky also failed to register as a salesperson for Celsius and as a securities and commodities dealer."

The Digital Currency Monetary Authority (DCMA) has innovated a best-in-class design for CBDC leveraging a digital economic union. This paper outlines the blueprint for a best-in-class CBDC design and discusses how a digital economic union and an international CBDC could complement and strengthen the international monetary system. Several sovereign states have collaborated with the DCMA on a Model Law for an international CBDC, or money commodity, and have provided draft legislation for such outlined in Appendix 1.

The Brookings Institute published a paper by Timothy Massad, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) , on how blockchain-based stablecoins could undermine the global financial system plumbing that has been exploited by U.S. authorities to protect national security interests (e.g., by implementing sanctions). He discusses various regulatory and legislative options, and finds them either insufficient or disrespecting reasonable privacy expectations. Mr. Massad suggests that, at minimum, stablecoin issuers should be required to engage in enhanced monitoring of blockchains for suspicious transactions and consider when the issuer must "freeze" stablecoins.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Global Markets Advisory Committee (GMAC) Digital Assets Subcommittee has proposed a new digital asset classification approach and taxonomy. It defines a digital asset in a technology agnostic manner, with the Subcommittee noting that the type of database or network should not be part of the classification to avoid "unintended consequences for the application of market regulations." https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8873-24

The Russian State Duma will consider a draft law on February 27, 2024, that will legalize the use of tokenized assets for cross border payments. Russia already has a legal framework for tokenized financial assets, which it refers to as digital financial assets (DFA). These regulated assets include tokenized commodities, trade finance and other structured products. However, DFAs were explicitly not allowed to be used for payments. However, Russia is now looking for alternative ways to settle cross border transactions, in light of sanctions imposed following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 279-136 in favor of the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (H.R. 4763), which aims to clarify which government agencies will have responsibility for overseeing specific tokens and digital asset platforms. FIT21 will significantly boost the oversight role of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) while significantly hobbling the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). FIT21 will now go to the Senate, and even if it did pass that hurdle, it would likely be by a margin sufficient to ward off a possible Biden veto of the bill as currently written.

The Enforcement Division of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has notified Consensys that it is closing its investigation into Ethereum (ETH) 2.0, and will not pursue an enforcement action against the technology incubator that develops decentralized software services and applications that operate on the Ethereum blockchain. The SEC was investigating whether ETH had become a "security" after it switched from a proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol (from "ETH 1.0" to "ETH 2.0"). In April 2024, Consensys had filed a lawsuit against the SEC, alleging that the investigation was an "unlawful seizure of authority" over Ethereum, on the grounds that ETH is a "commodity" and therefore outside the SEC's jurisdiction.

AgAu says it will store physical gold and silver in Switzerland and sell customers its tokens - each one a digital contract that grants the bearer direct ownership rights to a gram of either precious metal. The tokens would be freely traded with transactions validated and recorded on the Ethereum blockchain.