Coinbase Says SEC Has Agreed to Drop Lawsuit

Coinbase Says S.E.C. Will Drop Crypto Lawsuit

The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase said on Friday that the Securities and Exchange Commission had agreed to drop its lawsuit against the company, lifting a legal cloud over the global crypto industry and signaling a broader retreat by federal regulators.

Coinbase, in a post on its website and in a regulatory filing, said it had reached an agreement in principle with the S.E.C. to have the lawsuit withdrawn without any financial penalty. If the S.E.C. confirms the proposed settlement, it would be a remarkable reversal by the agency after years of legal battles against crypto firms.  

U.S. Marshals Service, Managing Billions of Seized Assets, Can’t Say How Much Crypto It Holds

The U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) is tasked with managing assets seized by law enforcement in the course of criminal investigations, like real estate, cash, jewelry, antiques or vehicles.

It is also supposed to be handling cryptocurrencies — for example, the billions of dollars worth of bitcoin (BTC) seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from darknet marketplace Silk Road in 2013.

However, the USMS doesn’t seem to know how much crypto it currently has. In fact, the agency is struggling to come up with a rough estimate of even its bitcoin holdings, a source familiar with the matter told CoinDesk. […]

As far as I’m aware, the USMS is currently managing this with individual keystrokes in an Excel spreadsheet,” Chip Borman, vice president of capture strategy and proposals at Addx Corporation, a firm that provides technological solutions to the U.S. government and was also turned down for a USMS contract, told CoinDesk. Borman said he saw USMS processes occur in real time in 2023.

“They’re one bad day away from a billion-dollar mistake.” […]

Significant amounts of bitcoin are apparently being held by various agencies across the administration — including the DOJ and Department of Treasury — and the USMS has no reconciliation process to figure out where it all sits, the source said.

Enforcement: Farewell to the SEC’s ALJs?

Last week, Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris sent a letter to Senator Charles Grassley informing the Senate that the DOJ had determined that statutory removal restrictions on administrative law judges were unconstitutional and that it would no longer defend them in court… […]

What does this mean for the SEC’s ALJs? Well, here’s what Project 2025 has to say about what should be done with the SEC’s administrative proceedings:

“Eliminate all administrative proceedings (APs) within the SEC except for stop orders related to defective registration statements. The SEC enforcement system does not need to have both district court cases and APs. Alternatively, respondents should be allowed to elect whether an adjudication occurs in the SEC’s administrative law court or an ordinary Article III federal court.”

I guess that last sentence leaves a little wiggle room, but if I were an SEC ALJ, I think I’d be updating my resume….

DOGE Cancelling SEC’s Access to Westlaw

DOGE is cancelling the SEC’s access to Westlaw, a key database for legal research, which sources tell me will dramatically hamper its Enforcement Division. This cut has resulted in cost savings of $0, DOGE’s website notes.

DOGE is also cancelling Politico Pro subscriptions across the federal government, including at the SEC. This week in an FT interview, Mathias Döpfner, Politico’s parent company’s CEO, praised JD Vance’s recent speech that denounced Europe’s political culture of ostracizing the far right.

Long Nights and an Adderall Addiction Drove This Wells Fargo Banker to Insider Trading

Femenia was a 28-year-old investment banker working for Wells Fargo when he tipped off his friends about confidential deals that the bank was working on. His friends would buy shares of companies that were in line to be acquired, reap the profits when the deals were announced and then kick back some of the gains to Femenia.

In two years, Femenia and his friends made more than $11 million trading off of confidential information, prosecutors said. He spent about three years in prison.

He says he came up with the scheme while he was abusing Adderall, which he started taking to deal with his long hours at Wells Fargo. The Wall Street Journal reported in December on the widespread use of ADHD medications on Wall Street and the psychological changes it causes in abusers.