Happy "Merge" Day!

Ethereum’s Long-Awaited ‘Merge’ Reaches the Finish Line

The moment finally arrived, in the last minutes before midnight on the West Coast on Wednesday.

After years of delays, discussions and frantic experimentation, the popular cryptocurrency platform Ethereum completed a long-awaited software upgrade known as the Merge, shifting to a more environmentally sustainable framework.

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By some estimates, Ethereum’s shift to proof of stake will reduce its energy consumption by more than 99 percent.

Pelosi Says Bill on Investing Rules for Lawmakers Will Face Vote This Month

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday that Democrats would bring legislation to the House floor this month that would place new restrictions on the ability of lawmakers to buy and sell stocks.

Her announcement came after months of negotiations over whether and how to restrict personal financial activity by members of Congress that could create real or perceived conflicts of interest with their public duties. And it came a day after The New York Times published an analysis showing that between 2019 and 2021, 97 representatives and senators or their immediate family members had reported trades of stocks, bonds, or other financial assets that could have been influenced by committees they were serving on.

The SEC Can’t Transform Itself Into a Climate-Change Enforcer

The SEC’s regulation is of a piece with those the court has struck down. We warned in a June 16 comment letter to the agency that Congress never assigned the SEC the task of overseeing environmental concerns. Yet that’s exactly what it sets out to do in its climate rule.

As GOP-appointed SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce noted in a March dissent, the agency is attempting to mandate that companies disclose a host of “climate-related risks; climate-related effects on strategy, business model, and outlook; board and management oversight of climate-related issues; processes for identifying, assessing, and managing climate risks; plans for [climate change] transition; financial statement metrics related to climate; greenhouse gas emissions; and climate targets and goals.”

By sweeping upstream and downstream contractors into its proposed rule, the SEC seeks to regulate companies that aren’t traded on public stock exchanges and therefore should be wholly outside the commission’s regulatory reach….

Coinbase-backed suit against Treasury set to become landmark blockchain case

Can the U.S. government sanction computer code?

That simple yet complex question is at the heart of a burgeoning legal fight backed by one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. The answer will likely have major implications for the government’s power to control the functions of digital assets.

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“The power that’s delegated to OFAC simply authorizes them to target persons or property,” Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, told The Block. “The smart contracts that they’re talking about,” that enable Tornado Cash, “these are neither persons nor property.”

Twitter Hit with Cybersecurity-Related Securities Suit Over Whistleblower Allegations

In the midst of its battles with Elon Musk over Musk’s attempt to walk away from his proposed takeover of the company, Twitter was rocked by the news that a whistleblower had sent Congress and federal agencies explosive reports of “major security problems” at the company. According to the news reports, the whistleblower’s disclosure not only detailed privacy and cybersecurity vulnerabilities at Twitter, but also included allegations that company management had misled its own corporate board and government regulators about the vulnerabilities. Among other things, these revelations triggered a Congressional inquiry. And now, a plaintiff shareholder has launched a securities class action lawsuit against the company and several of its executives, based on the whistleblower’s allegations. As discussed below, the complaint has several interesting features.

Craig Wright Tells Court He ‘Stomped on the Hard Drive’ Containing Satoshi Wallet Keys

Craig Wright told a Norwegian court on Wednesday that he “stomped on the hard drive” that contained the “key slices” required to grant him access to Satoshi Nakamoto’s private keys, making it “incredibly difficult” to cryptographically prove he is the creator of Bitcoin – a title he has claimed but failed to prove since 2016.

Wright’s inability to back up his claims with acceptable evidence is the issue at the center of his trial in Norway, one of two simultaneous legal battles between Wright and crypto Twitter personality Hodlonaut (real name Magnus Granath) over a series of tweets Hodlonaut – then, a public school teacher with roughly 8,000 Twitter followers – wrote in March 2019, deeming Wright a pretender and calling him a “scammer” and a “fraud.”

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Destroying the hard drive, Wright told the court, was “the only way” to avoid being forced to prove his identity cryptographically – something he said he “refused” to do because it would give his critics “the easy way out.”