The CoinDesk policy team is scattered throughout the world; in the final edition of this newsletter, each member explains what they’re watching in 2024 in the world of crypto regulations. Happy holidays, and we’ll see you next year!
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The narrative
As is now this newsletter’s annual tradition, CoinDesk’s regulation team explains what we’re paying attention to in 2024.
Why it matters
Next year will be busy. Crypto is having a resurgent moment, and this past year’s conviction of Sam Bankman-Fried and guilty plea from Changpeng Zhao, the potential approval of a spotbitcoin exchangetraded fund and just a general upswing in the market are sure to have a lot of people feeling hopeful about this industry’s future. But lawmakers and regulators aren’t likely to spend less time on crypto issues either.
Breaking it down
Nikhilesh De: There’s no rest for the weary. Though a lot happened in 2023, including an entire criminal trial, next year promises to be much busier. I’m interested in five main categories of events or activities that may play out next year: Court cases, elections, regulatory agency actions, legislation and the broader crypto market.
Court cases
Obviously the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has had a pretty active year, with lawsuits against Coinbase, Kraken and Binance/Binance.US over the past 12 months (really the past seven). While the regulator’s case against Ripple shows us that it may take a while for these cases to resolve, we’ll still start seeing how the courts view the arguments being made.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission will likewise have an interesting role next year. CFTC Chair Rostin Behnam has said on a number of public occasions that he’s proud of how many enforcement actions his agency’s taken, and that’s not likely to let up next year.
Beyond that, there’s also the national security and criminal cases. USA v. Avi Eisenberg, Roman Storm, Alex Mashinsky, Changpeng Zhao and even Samuel Bankman-Fried (round 2) will see federal prosecutors raise some interesting legal questions for the crypto industry.
Bankman-Fried and Zhao both have sentencing hearings coming up in the first half of the new year….
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