Admit One

Goldman Sachs retreating from SPACs over regulatory threat

David Solomon’s Goldman Sachs is reducing its involvement with blank-check companies, a spokesperson for the bank said on Monday, as US regulators continue to clamp down on what was one of the hottest trends on Wall Street in recent years.

The boom in the special purpose acquisition company (SPACs) market had been a boon for Goldman’s investment banking business. However, tightening scrutiny from the US securities watchdog and saturated investor sentiment has led to a sharp decline in SPAC issuance.

She’s not your ‘Crypto Mom’: Hester Peirce’s fight with the SEC

That’s a long way of saying my biggest complaint is that we have not used the non-enforcement authority we have to make a workable way for this industry to innovate in ways that appropriately balances our regulatory objectives with the need to move forward.Sometimes we talk about responsible innovation. I think we should talk about responsible regulation, too. It’s not responsible to come in years after the fact and say, “You did something wrong,” when people were saying to us, “Could you please help us figure out how we can do this right?”

Crypto Enforcement Is Here, and Always Has Been

There are those in the crypto sphere who, despite the strong warnings of several federal agencies, believe there can be no enforcement without crypto specific regulation. This is not the case. There are also those who believe that just because a federal agency has not yet commenced an enforcement action against a particular practice, that practice is permissible. This is not the case either. While cryptocurrency, and digital assets more broadly, are so far-reaching and innovative as to necessitate the continued development of more specific regulations and legislation, digital assets are already governed by various existing regulations and acts.

Bitcoin investors are panicking as a controversial crypto experiment unravels

TerraUSD, or UST, sank below 70 cents for the first time late Monday, as holders continued to flee the token in what some have described as a “bank run.” The token fell as low as 62 cents before regaining ground to trade at 90 cents Tuesday, according to Coinbase data.

Created by Singapore-based Terraform Labs in 2018, UST is what’s known as an “algorithmic” stablecoin. Part of the Terra blockchain project, it’s meant to track the value of the dollar, like fellow stablecoins tether and USDC.

However, unlike with those cryptocurrencies, Terra doesn’t have cash and other assets held in a reserve to back its token. Instead, it uses a complex mix of code — alongside a sister token called luna — to stabilize prices.

It’s important for bitcoin investors as Luna Foundation Guard, an organization supporting the Terra project, is sitting on billions of dollars in bitcoin that could potentially be dumped onto the market at any point.