We’re catching up with some of the most knowledgable names on the regulatory scene for crypto in the US with Jake Chervinsky, Kristin Smith and Rebecca Rettig at a time when the stakes have rarely been higher.

Following a major setback yesterday, there is still hope that onerous new tax requirements for the cryptocurrency industry can be addressed before they become law.  That’s the upshot from a day of frustration on the floor of the U.S. Senate when the crypto community got a crash course in the vicissitudes of Washington. Ever since…

Top U.S. lawmakers and regulators are taking steps to tighten their grasp on cryptocurrencies, or advocating for greater control over digital assets. Here are the bills, speeches and charges issued by U.S. government representatives and agencies in the past week:  Infrastructure Bill — Proposed on Aug. 1, a major infrastructure bill awaiting the Senate’s final…

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce is taking a “liberty-loving perspective” when it comes to cryptocurrency and DeFi, contrasting with statements by the agency’s chairman on Tuesday.  For Peirce, who joined a panel hosted by The Defiant and DeFi Watch on Aug. 4, if users are voluntarily deciding to trust the code over a company then they…

Taxing cryptocurrencies just picked up serious momentum, with potentially serious ramifications for DeFi.  The U.S. Senate’s $1 trillion infrastructure package now under consideration includes a provision that would tax transactions involving Bitcoin and its ilk to raise around $28 billion in funding. That means swapping Ethereum and other DeFi tokens may have to be recorded…

Brace yourself Defiers: Government regulation in the U.S. is looking more and more like an inevitability. On July 27, the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs conducted a hearing to explore potential regulation needs for the cryptocurrency sector. The hearing, titled “Cryptocurrencies: What are they good for?,” largely centered around whether or…

European Defiers better buckle up, because regulators in the EU are attempting to tighten the rules on crypto transfers.  On July 20, the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, announced a package of legislative proposals to strengthen the EU’s anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing (AML/CFT) rules. The legislative proposal moves to apply…

When Philipp Pieper and Timo Lehes co-founded Swarm Markets in 2017 in California and then moved to Berlin, they did a strange thing. They knocked on the door of Germany’s financial watchdog, known as BaFin, and said, please regulate us. That’s not supposed to happen in DeFi. The whole idea is to break free from…

The World Economic Forum, a bastion of the global establishment and ultra-exclusive club for heads of state, billionaires, and policymakers, is embracing DeFi. Well, sort of. In another sign that decentralized finance has spurred serious study in influential think tanks, the Geneva-based WEF issued a “Policy-Maker Toolkit.” The 38-page white paper explores DeFi’s benefits and…

DeFi is going to Washington.  A group of influential Uniswap users are proposing the formation of a DeFi political defense fund to address government action aimed at cryptocurrencies. At the top of the list: the Biden administration’s 2020 budget proposal, which includes a potential expansion of cryptocurrency asset reporting requirements While many investors in the…