It’s officially the New Year, and I couldn’t be more excited to be back in what is sure to be a legislative and administrative rulemaking sprint for Q1 2026. It was another slow holiday week without any stories warranting “major story” attention, but we have a (semi) confirmed date for market structure mark-up in the Senate, and an interesting token launch strategy banking on U.S. regulatory policies in crypto continuing to trend in their current trajectory.
Here’s everything that happened last week in crypto law:
OTHER STORIES
China Digital Yuan Interest: China is going to start paying interest to digital wallets holding the Chinese CBDC digital yuan. This makes it more important than ever to resist placing restrictions on payments of interest to U.S. dollar stablecoin holders. It’s a matter of maintaining dollar dominance.
Senate Banking Market Structure Markup: The Senate Banking Committee will reportedly hold a markup of the crypto market structure bill (RFIA) on January 15th. This is a fool me 30 times situation so hard to say with certainty until there is a firm announcement, but all signs point to a mid-January markup of the pending legislation.
Lighter Launching Token in U.S.: The developers of the Lighter DeFi exchange platform announced they are launching a token, and doing it from their U.S. C-Corp entity rather than a more traditional separation of development company and token issuing entity. I very much need to dig into their materials to see how they structure this.
SEC Commissioner Crenshaw Out: Commissioner Crenshaw has officially left the SEC after her term expired last year and an attempt at getting her another 5-year term failed last year. She was a strong ally in former Chair Gensler’s actions against crypto during his reign, so not many in the industry will be upset she is gone. But it does leave the SEC down to 3 commissioners, so potentially something to watch along with the CFTC’s missing commissioners.
Privacy Reminder: One of the leading crypto forensics firms calling 2025 “a record year for wrench attacks” is a good reminder on why privacy preserving technologies must be protected at all costs.
Prediction Markets Update: This was a nice little rundown on the boom of prediction markets this past year, which coincides with House Representative Torres (a strong crypto-advocate) formally raising an eyebrow at prediction markets regarding recent actions in Venezuela.
CFTC Chief of Staff: Amir Zaidi has been tapped to be the next Chief of Staff at the CFTC. Zaidi was instrumental in the CFTC’s approval of bitcoin futures products during his last stint at the agency so seemingly well-suited for what is expected to be a busy rulemaking agenda around crypto specifically in the upcoming months.
MEV Brothers Retrial Update: The U.S. attorney’s office took the unusual step of opposing a request to file an amicus by DeFi Education Fund in the MEV Brother’s retrial? Prosecutors didn’t oppose a prior filing by CoinCenter in that case, so odd they would give this amicus more attention by forcing the judge to rule on whether to allow the filing or not.
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: In late 2022, while I was at Polsinelli, I started preparing weekly updates for attorneys at the firm to stay abreast of the latest Web3 legal developments. I now 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 are solely my own. They do not reflect the official stance or endorsement of the Digital Chamber or any of its members.
The NFTtorney 