Top Stories of The Week SEC Crypto Task Force met with firms
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Top Stories of The Week
SEC Crypto Task Force met with firms to discuss staking, litigation review
The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Crypto Task Force met with several representatives from the cryptocurrency and traditional finance sectors to discuss regulatory issues impacting digital assets in early February. Key themes included staking, clear guidelines for exchange-traded products (ETPs) and a new framework for policing the emerging asset class.
According to memoranda available on the SEC’s website, the Crypto Task Force met with the Blockchain Association, an industry lobby group, on Feb. 4. The lobby group suggested six priority areas the task force should focus on to “tackle issues that impact the digital asset industry.”
In addition to establishing regulatory principles and clearer guidelines, the lobby group requested that the SEC adopt a pro-innovation approach to broker-dealers, custodians and exchanges; establish uniform ETP standards; and ensure protocol staking is not classified as a security.
Elizabeth Warren calls Elon Musk ’bank robber’ for dismantling CFPB
US Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren is pushing back against Elon Musk and President Donald Trump over efforts to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an agency she helped create in 2007.
The CFPB — a US government agency focused on consumer protection — was hit with another wave of layoffs on Feb. 13, receiving termination notices for up to 100 employees, NPR reported.
The layoffs came shortly after Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget and acting head of the CFPB recently appointed by US President Donald Trump, cut off the agency from new funding in line with the agenda of the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency’s Workforce Optimization Initiative.
“The CFPB was created by Congress, and Congress — not Elon Musk, not Donald Trump — is the only one that can shut it down,” Warren said in an interview with progressive publication Mother Jones on Feb. 12.
SEC acknowledges Grayscale’s XRP and DOGE ETF filings
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has acknowledged filings from crypto asset manager Grayscale seeking to list spot XRP and Dogecoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
The SEC’s Feb. 13 acknowledgments of Grayscale’s Form 19b-4 filings for the Grayscale XRP Trust and the Grayscale Dogecoin Trust means the clock will soon start for the agency to review and decide on the applications within a mandated 240-day deadline.
The 240-day timer will start when Grayscale’s filings are submitted to the SEC’s federal register, which typically happens within days. If entered now, it would mean the SEC’s decision deadline would be in mid-October.
Coinbase CEO predicts 10% of global GDP to be on crypto rails by 2030
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says it’s the “dawn of a new era for crypto” in the US and predicted that as much as 10% of global gross domestic product (GDP) will be crypto-based by 2030.
“Up to 10% of global GDP could be running on crypto rails by the end of this decade,” Armstrong said during Coinbase’s Feb. 13 fourth-quarter 2024 earnings call.
Armstrong compared the current movement of companies trying to integrate crypto to the early 2000s, when every company had to figure out how to adapt to the internet.
“Onchain is the new online,” he said.
If Armstrong’s prediction plays out, it would mean over $10 trillion in value would be tokenized or onchain, based on today’s global GDP of over $100 trillion, according to the World Bank.
CZ’s dog’s name sparks ‘Broccoli’ memecoin frenzy
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, founder and former CEO of Binance, revealed his dog’s name, Broccoli, in an X post on Feb. 13, sparking a wave of memecoins named after the Belgian Malinois canine.
Broccoli memecoins have quickly taken up residence on popular memecoin launching platforms, including Solana’s Pump.fun, where there are at least 480 Broccoli-themed coins, and BNB Smart Chain’s Four.Meme, with at least 300 coins at the time of writing. Some have gained traction, with one Solana Broccoli memecoin reaching a $1.5 billion market capitalization on Feb. 13.
CZ stressed that he was not launching a memecoin of his own, adding that it’s “up to the community to do that (or not).”
Winners and Losers
At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $97,351, Ether (ETH) at $2,727 and XRP at $2.73. The total market cap is at $3.24 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.
Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are PancakeSwap (CAKE) at 75.99%, Sonic (prev. FTM) (S) at 41.67% and SPX6900 (SPX) at 35.51%.
The top three altcoin losers of the week are Onyxcoin (XCN) at 19.09%, Bitget Token (BGB) at 16.21%…
cointelegraph.com