Court Slaps Bilzerian Heirs With Fresh Contempt Over 1989 SEC Order The D.C. district court just reminded Paul Bilzerian’s family that a 2001 injunction still binds them, rejecting their attempt to sidestep a decades-old SEC fraud judgment. The ruling matters because it underscores how long-ago securities violations can resurface to freeze assets and block new…
Bitcoin Price Slips Below $84K as 20-Minute Flush Erases $400M in Longs Bitcoin fell below $84,000 during a sharp 20-minute sell-off that wiped out approximately $400 million in long positions. Long positions are leveraged bets that an asset’s price will rise. When prices move against those positions, exchanges may automatically close them if traders no…
Court Slaps CFTC—Again—for Overreaching on Kraft The Seventh Circuit just told the Commodity Futures Trading Commission it cannot keep milking the same wheat-futures case against Kraft Foods and Mondelēz. In a sharply worded order, the appellate panel refused to let the agency relitigate whether a 2015 consent order already settled claims that the food giants…
COURT HANDS SEC A BITTER LOSS IN RIPPLE APPEAL Federal appeals court slashes SEC penalty, narrows “investment contract” test, and hands crypto traders a clearer map for what counts as a security. The Second Circuit just reversed a $125 million fine against Ripple Labs and sharply limited the SEC’s ability to label secondary-market XRP sales…
JUDGES REIN IN CFTC OVERREACH ON FAMILY TRUST A federal appeals court just clipped the CFTC’s wings in a trust case that could reshape how regulators treat private entities trading derivatives. The ruling matters because it signals that courts are willing to push back against broad agency authority when the underlying facts are thin. The…
The ZCash situation explained as ZEC falls 19% and Bitcoin trades below $90,000 ZCash’s native token, ZEC, fell 19% as Bitcoin traded below $90,000, putting renewed focus on the privacy-focused cryptocurrency and its recent market performance. The decline was highlighted alongside an interview with Mert, a prominent ZEC bull, who discussed the broader situation surrounding…
Court Tosses SEC’s “Investment Contract” Dragnet Over Crypto Assets In a sweeping rebuke to the SEC, the Fifth Circuit has ruled that crypto assets themselves are not “investment contracts” under federal securities law, marking the first appellate-level rejection of the agency’s long-standing enforcement theory. The decision slashes a key pillar of the Commission’s strategy against…
Regal Commodities v Tauber (2024 NY Slip Op 01736) Court Kills Broker’s Claim, Tightens Commodities Rule on Crypto New York’s Second Department just threw out a commodities broker’s lawsuit against a client who refused to pay after a crypto-linked trade went south. The ruling is small in print but big in ripple—because it signals that…
Bitcoin Rises to $96,750 as Coinbase News and Football.Fun TGE Interview Draw Attention Bitcoin rose to $96,750, according to the information provided, as market attention turned to new Coinbase-related developments and an interview with the founder of Football.Fun ahead of its token generation event, or TGE. The available details do not specify which Coinbase announcement…
CFTC Loses Bid to Gag Kraft Over Wheat Trades The Seventh Circuit just slammed the door on the CFTC’s attempt to keep a lid on its own enforcement file. In a sharply worded opinion, the court refused to force Kraft and Mondelēz to stay silent about a confidential settlement they reached with the regulator over…
COURT KILLS SEC’S STABLECOIN POWER GRAB The Fifth Circuit just gutted the SEC’s ability to treat every stablecoin transaction as a securities trade, slapping down the agency’s attempt to regulate the entire stablecoin market through the back door. In a 2-1 ruling, the court said the SEC lacked statutory authority to force exchanges to register…
Engineer Gets 32 Months for Bitcoin Extortion Plot Against His Own Employer A former engineer was sentenced to 32 months in prison after attempting to extort his employer for bitcoin by sabotaging the company’s internal systems, according to a case summary published by JD Supra. Prosecutors said the engineer, Daniel Rhyne, deliberately locked his company’s…
JUDGE BLOCKS MULTI-STATE CRYPTO SUIT CONSOLIDATION A federal panel just denied a plaintiff’s bid to bundle three crypto-related lawsuits into a single Illinois courtroom, leaving separate courts to decide whether tokens are securities or commodities. The decision keeps the regulatory landscape fractured and forces exchanges, DeFi projects, and traders to litigate the same core issue…
Banking Group Sues to Block Crypto’s “Side Door” Into the Banking System A banking group has filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent the crypto industry from gaining access to the traditional banking system through what it describes as a “side door.” The case places renewed attention on the boundary between crypto companies and regulated banking…
Court Slaps CFTC on Wrist, Monex Keeps Selling Gold The Ninth Circuit just told the CFTC it cannot ban Monex’s leveraged metals contracts the way it tried. The ruling cuts off a three-year-old enforcement action that claimed Monex’s “Atlas” program was an illegal off-exchange retail commodity transaction. For crypto traders who still remember the SEC’s…
Judge Deals CFTC Major Blow on Crypto Derivatives In a blunt rebuke to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the D.C. Circuit just handed crypto derivatives traders a new legal shield and stripped the agency of broad enforcement power over certain digital-asset contracts. The June 5 ruling in Kitchen v. CFTC says the agency went too…
CFTC Unveils Plan to Bring Crypto Exchanges Under Federal Oversight The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has unveiled a plan to bring crypto exchanges under federal oversight, signaling a potential expansion of the agency’s role in the digital-asset market. The initiative would place greater regulatory attention on crypto trading platforms and could mark a broader effort…
CFTC Wins Ninth Circuit Showdown Over Crypto Fraud The Ninth Circuit just handed the CFTC a decisive victory in its decade-long case against James Devlin Crombie, ruling that virtual currencies traded on unregistered platforms are subject to federal commodities law and that the agency can pursue fraud claims even when no actual investors lose money….
Judge Slams IRS Crypto Seizure, Orders Funds Returned A federal judge has ruled that the IRS jumped the gun when it seized twenty-four cryptocurrency accounts without proving they were tied to crimes or owed taxes, handing the government its first major procedural loss in a high-stakes digital-asset forfeiture case. The decision chips away at the…
SEC Suffers Major Defeat in Binance Case as Judge Narrows Scope of Crypto Crackdown The federal judge overseeing the SEC’s lawsuit against Binance just gutted key parts of the agency’s case, ruling that most of the crypto exchange’s transactions fall outside U.S. jurisdiction and that the agency overreached in trying to label every token as…
