"Extinguishing Fire With Napalm"

SEC launches insider trading inquiry into crypto exchanges

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has launched a sweeping inquiry into whether crypto exchanges have proper safeguards to prevent insider trading on their platforms, FOX Business has learned.

According to a person with direct knowledge of the inquiry, the SEC has sent a letter to one major crypto exchange requesting information about how the platform protects users from insider trading facilitated through its network, but, this person believes the inquiry covers other exchanges as well.

Bill Gates says crypto and NFTs are based on ‘greater fool theory’

Bill Gates is not a fan of cryptocurrencies or non-fungible tokens.

Speaking at a TechCrunch talk on climate change Tuesday, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder described the phenomenon as something that’s “100% based on greater fool theory,” referring to the idea that overvalued assets will go up in price when there are enough investors willing to pay more for them.

Gates joked that “expensive digital images of monkeys” would “improve the world immensely,” referring to the much-hyped Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection.

U.S. financial firms push back on SEC bid to rein-in blank check company deals

U.S. financial industry groups are pushing to water down a draft Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule aimed at reining-in special purpose acquisition companies or SPACs, arguing it could kill the industry.

The American Securities Association (ASA), the SPAC Association and the CFA Institute are among groups warning that the SEC’s proposed March rule would create too much liability for parties involved in SPAC deals, and as such goes further than traditional initial public offering (IPO) and M&A rules.

The Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto Crashing — a quick map of where we are and what’s ahead

The entire crypto space has been a Jenga stack of interconnected time bombs for months now, getting ever more interdependent as the companies find new ways to prop each other up.

Which company blew out first was more a question of minor detail than the fact that a blow-out was obviously going to happen. The other blocks in the Jenga stack will have a hard time not following suit.

Here’s a quick handy guide to the crypto crash — the systemic risks in play as of June 2022. When Bitcoin slips below $20,000, we’ll officially call that the end of the 2021 bubble.

Crypto Firms Quake as Prices Fall

A global industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars rose up practically overnight. Now it is crashing down.

After weeks of plummeting cryptocurrency prices, Coinbase said on Tuesday that it was cutting 18 percent of its employees, after layoffs at other crypto companies like Gemini, BlockFi and Crypto.com. High-profile start-ups like Terraform Labs have imploded, wiping away years of investments. On Sunday, an experimental crypto bank, Celsius, abruptly halted withdrawals.

Investors Are Increasingly Skeptical of ESG. This Is Why

ESG has become a punching bag for the far right, for disgruntled corporate executives and even industry insiders. But there’s one group whose growing disapproval might be the ultimate game changer.

Retail investors are slowly starting to look under the hood of the $40 trillion environmental, social and governance industry that’s increasingly steering their savings, and many aren’t liking what they see. What’s more, some of the biggest names in finance have been tainted by greenwashing allegations, with Goldman Sachs Asset Management and the investment arm of Deutsche Bank AG among the most prominent.

Crypto Legislation Could Undermine Market Regulations, Gensler Says

Asked about a bill introduced last week by Sens. Cynthia Lummis (R., Wyo.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.), Mr. Gensler initially demurred, saying he would prefer to discuss the proposed legislation with the senators. But he then suggested that legislative changes targeting cryptocurrencies could have implications for stock exchanges or mutual funds.

“We don’t want to undermine the protections we have in a $100 trillion capital market,” Mr. Gensler said at The Wall Street Journal’s CFO Network Summit. “Like behaviors should have like treatment.”

Asked if the recent rout in cryptocurrency prices added new urgency to the SEC’s concerns about the market, Mr. Gensler said, “the urgency is highlighted, but the urgency has been there.”