#1 - On July 10, 2024, the French Financial Market Authority (AMF) published a summary document of the responses to its discussion paper on decentralized finance (DeFi) opened in June 2023. In the analysis and recommendations made by stakeholders, 5 points stand out⬇️

What attracted me to Austrian economics years ago was the no-nonsense (not to mention grammatical) prose of writers like von Mises, Rothbard, and Henry Hazlitt—a far cry from some of today’s turgid postmodern-style word salad. What happened?

yeah so there is a reason why prediction markets are heavily regulated (in fact basically prohibited) in the U.S. whether that rule represents the right social cost/benefit analysis is very much an open question but let's not ignore the Black Mirror risks/downsides this is

Today, the Federal Court for the Northern District of California ruled, as matter of law, that none of the tokens trading on Kraken are securities. This is a significant win for Kraken, for the principle of clarity and for crypto users everywhere. It also confirms Kraken’s

The CFTC's action on Uniswap Labs has a problem. We don't learn anything from it. The details released suggest that UL's crime could be as broad as merely publishing code, which is protected speech. In settling they don't have to lay out their claims. No one learns what

Here's Peter Van Valkenburgh's opening statement from today's DeFi hearing in the House

Some thoughts on NFTs being on the enforcement menu at the SEC: sec.gov/newsroom/speec… Order is here: sec.gov/files/litigati…

Yesterday, the SEC announced the latest enforcement action against an NFT project - the social club Flyfish Club As Commissioners Peirce and Uyeda point out in their eloquent dissent titled "Omakase," the Flyfish settlement action "is just the latest dish that undermines trust

so many of you will remember my reporting around "operation choke point 2.0" from the spring of 2023; TLDR, Biden's financial regulators, namely the Fed, FDIC, and OCC launched a crackdown on banks covering the crypto space...

Put Pierce or Uyeda in charge of the SEC. They just get it. So reassuring to hear people who actually care about fostering capital formation at one of these hearings instead of Gensler's endless gaslighting.

SDNY: Want to know if courts think you are doing unlicensed money transmission? Meh, go pay for a court transcript; it's not something we'll put down in writing. So, I'm working on an analysis of Judge Failla's disappointing ruling in Roman Storm's Tornado Cash case. One thing

How Libra Was Killed. I never shared this publicly before, but since Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 opened the floodgates on Joe Rogan’s pod, it feels appropriate to shed more light on this. As a reminder, Libra (then Diem) was an advanced, high-performance, payments-centric blockchain paired with a

Sony's L2 just showed us something wild about OP Stack censorship resistance: Their attempt to block "unapproved" tokens spectacularly backfired in less than 24 hours after launch. Here's exactly what went down 🧵

My watch has ended. After five years as Kraken’s Chief Legal Officer, I’m passing on the reins to a successor. I’ll stay close as a senior advisor. I’m going to help train up a successor and help to build a global advisory council for the company. I couldn’t be more proud of

People keep asking me since days how to secure their systems and what the best strategy is. I will be very honest with you all as I'm always. If you want real security (and there will be never 100% security), it's not (just) about tools—it's about fucking mindset. At least 80% of

again I must stress, I respect the hustle and skill that went into Solana & I understand the worldview & premises behind it & think there is some chance they could be correct, but it just has zero to do with what got me interested in crypto...which was self-sovereignty,

Did a quick skim of the latest draft of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (aka the 'market structure bill'). I think this is the one. People who have followed me know I have gone back and forth on different versions of this bill--initially liking it then hating it after the

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce delivered an amazing speech today on financial privacy, which included references to Phil Zimmermann’s Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) and Eric Hughes’ A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto. She stated: “Rather than something to be feared, we should embrace these

0/ On the topic of debunking factually incorrect takes, this thread from our friend Amanda Fischer at Bitter (a more accurate name these days, unfortunately) Markets hit my radar today. This... is a mess.

So it sounds like no verdict on money laundering (gov't could possibly re-prosecute). Guilty on conspiracy to transmit money, and not guilty on conspiracy to evade sanctions. Happy about 1 and 3. The money transmission charge was inappropriate from the start and the way the