Last week, people were focused on projects announcing plans for (assumedly, governance) tokens to increase decentralization, including MetaMask and Base. The SEC also took another step forward by providing generic listing standards for exchange traded products which will allow for easier listing of crypto ETFs for people who want exposure to tokens through those types of products, and Senate Democrats reiterated their desire to ensure the Senate market structure bill is a truly bipartisan effort.
Here’s everything that happened last week in crypto law:
SEC Approves Rule Proposal for Generic Listing Standards for ETFs
The SEC has granted requests for accelerated approval of certain proposed rule changes which would make it easier to list Commodity-Based Trust Shares without needing to apply for proposed rule changes with the SEC each time. This approval is significant for crypto, as there are dozens of crypto ETFs awaiting the SEC’s sign-off, and this approval will accelerate that process both for pending applications and similar applications going forward. There is expected to be a wave spot crypto ETF launches in coming weeks and months as a result of this move from the SEC.
Tl;dr– This topic was one of the various included in Commissioner Peirce’s February 21, 2025 statement soliciting public input on regulatory issues related to blockchain technology and crypto assets. The Digital Chamber (including follow-up comments specific to the proposal) and many others submitted comments on those ETF topics, so great to see that advocacy work in action getting results. The SEC also approved trading for a fund that holds five cryptocurrencies last week. Next up would be allowing staking in those products or allowing ETFs for liquid staking tokens, which would effectively do the same thing.
OTHER STORIES
Base Network Exploring Native Token: The Coinbase-incubated L2 network, Base, is apparently in the early stage of exploring a native token. I don’t know how an L2 ever reaches Stage 2 decentralization without a native token to use for governance votes. But I will believe it when I see it after so many native token explorations that never turn into anything. MetaMask also jumped on the bandwagon to (again) announce a pending potential token.
Senate Democrats Follow-Up on Market Structure: A group of Senate Democrats followed-up on their prior market structure framework goals with another release asking for true bipartisan work on the current legislation in a not-so-subtle statement that they do not feel sufficiently involved in the drafting process right now. With the current plan for there to be a markup in Senate Banking on September 30th, that doesn’t leave a lot of time to combine forces into the final bill.
Stablecoins Update: Apparently the Bank of England is considering capping how much English citizens can own in stablecoins the same week the total supply of stablecoins on ETH reached $166 billion. Other countries are realizing how huge stablecoin adoption is going to be for dollar dominance and they are not fans. This all is happening while U.S. banks are trying to regulatory capture their way into slowing stablecoin adoption.
Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Bill: The BITCOIN Act, which would enable budget-neutral ways for the U.S. government to buy Bitcoin, got some momentum last week as industry leaders went to D.C. to advocate for it. I obviously am in favor of the government having a supply of ultra-sound money, but as far as legislative policies go, this is personally fairly far down my priorities. However, if this is important to you, the Digital Chamber has set up an easy way to contact your representatives and let them know.
Request for Comment on GENIUS Act: Department of Treasury has issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking seeking comments on implementation of the GENIUS Act. Good to see them moving forward here but lots of work to be done on getting the GENIUS Act fully implemented.
Crypto Pastor Fraud: The pastor who went viral a while back for saying the Lord told him to sell worthless crypto to his followers to pay for a kitchen remodel has been found to have committed securities fraud through the scheme in civil litigation. He and his wife have also been criminally indicted for the scheme, but in a glass half full view I bet their kitchen is super nice.
Coinbase Allowing USDC DeFi Lending: I am a big fan of Morpho and have been for a while as a complement to the lending I do on AAVE, so love to see Coinbase is furthering its integration with the DeFi platform to now allow users to lend USDC there as well.
Bloomberg Op-Ed: Tuongvy Le is one of those attorneys in the space that is universally respected and always delivers thoughtful insights. So when I see she wrote something new (this time a great plain speak explanation on how capital markets could be improved with blockchain technologies), it gets posted in these updates.
Hyperliquid Competitor Launches: CZ backed Aster launched this past week, which is a DeFi perpetuals platform on the BNB chain designed to be a competitor to Hyperliquid. Considering Hyperliquid was created by a trader who didn’t like the Binance perps platform, idk how this competitor will do, but there is a ton of activity on BNB chain so possible this blows up too.
FinCEN Unable to Link SRAs to Convictions: It is crazy to me that the Bank Secrecy Act’s suspicious activity reporting (“SAR”) requirements costs American businesses almost $60 billion in compliance costs and the agency overseeing that reporting can’t even say how many SARs actually led to convictions. Long overdue for reform.
CFTC Chair Drama Continues: It is being reported that the Trump administration is considering new candidates for the open CFTC Chair position after the current nominee, Brian Quintenz, has had his nomination stall after an ongoing and public dustup with the Winklevoss twins. Would be nice for something to be decided as all these initiatives move forward without a more permanent leadership in place.
CONCLUSION
If you have any questions or would like me to write about anything else, let me know on Twitter (X?) or Farcaster. As always, I am an attorney, I am not your attorney. For legal advice, you should always consult (and pay for) an attorney.
Outro/Disclaimer: Since late 2022, I’ve prepared weekly updates for attorneys at my firm to stay abreast of the latest Web3 legal developments. The biggest stories are included in Bi-Weekly posts on the firm’s BitBlog, where we provide tl;dr overviews and insights into the biggest stories from the past two weeks. I post the weekly updates on my personal blog every Tuesday, where I also provide links to more obscure legal developments and otherwise discuss industry trends and stories. Please note, the views and opinions I express, both on BitBlog and my personal blog, are solely my own. They do not reflect the official stance or endorsement of my firm.
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