SEC Probing Coinbase for Listing Unregistered Securities

Coinbase Faces SEC Investigation Over Cryptocurrency Listings

Coinbase Global Inc. is facing a US probe into whether it improperly let Americans trade digital assets that should have been registered as securities, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s scrutiny of Coinbase has increased since the platform expanded the number of tokens in which it offers trading, said two of the people, who asked not to be named because the inquiry hasn’t been disclosed publicly. The probe by the SEC’s enforcement unit predates the agency’s investigation into an alleged insider trading scheme that led the regulator last week to sue a former Coinbase manager and two other people.

SEC Charges Former Indiana Congressman with Insider Trading

According to the SEC’s complaint, after leaving Congress in 2011, Buyer formed a consulting firm, the Steve Buyer Group, which provided services to, among other clients, T-Mobile. In March 2018, Buyer attended a golf outing with a T-Mobile executive, from whom he learned about the company’s then nonpublic plan to acquire Sprint. Buyer began purchasing Sprint securities the next day, and, ahead of the merger announcement, he acquired a total of $568,000 of Sprint common stock in his own personal accounts, a joint account with his cousin, and an acquaintance’s account. After news of the merger leaked in April 2018, Buyer saw an immediate profit of more than $107,000.

In 2019, according to the SEC’s complaint, Buyer purchased more than $1 million of Navigant Consulting, Inc. securities ahead of the public announcement that it would be acquired by another one of Buyer’s consulting clients, Guidehouse LLP. Buyer again spread the purchases across several accounts, including his own accounts, joint accounts with his wife and son, his wife’s personal account, and the same acquaintance’s account involved in the Sprint trading. The complaint alleges that, in August 2019, on the day that the Navigant acquisition was publicly announced, Buyer sold nearly all of the shares he had acquired across the various accounts and profited more than $227,000.

SEC Files Multiple Insider Trading Actions Originating from the Market Abuse Unit’s Analysis and Detection Center

The Securities and Exchange Commission today filed insider trading charges against nine individuals in connection with three separate alleged schemes that together yielded more than $6.8 million in ill-gotten gains. Those charged include a former chief information security officer (CISO), an investment banker, and a former FBI trainee, all of whom allegedly shared confidential information with their friends, who then traded on that confidential information. Each of the three actions announced today originated from the SEC Enforcement Division’s Market Abuse Unit’s (MAU) Analysis and Detection Center, which uses data analysis tools to detect suspicious trading patterns.

Binance CEO Sues Bloomberg’s Hong Kong Partner for Defamation

Zhao demanded a retraction, called for the edition’s removal from newsstands and for a restraining order to stop the defendants from further spreading the portrayal; Modern Media has already obliged in part. He separately filed a motion for discovery against Bloomberg L.P. and Bloomberg Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, over “defamatory allegations” in the profile piece.

There, Zhao took issue with the article’s portrayal of Binance as “sketchy” and with an anonymous quote from a trader that called Binance a “massive shitcoin casino.” These statements “were obviously designed to mislead readers into believing” that Zhao was breaking the law, the motion read.

US Senators Push Bill to Make Small Crypto Transactions Tax-Free

Prominent U.S. senators are trying to free Americans from tracking taxes every time cryptocurrencies change hands, introducing a bill that would exempt them from reporting any transactions up to $50 or any trade in which they earn less than $50.

Sen. Patrick Toomey (R-Pa.) joined with Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to push the exemption from tax requirements for crypto users making small investments or purchases. Their Virtual Currency Tax Fairness Act matches a similar effort previously introduced in the House of Representatives. The idea of clearing low-level transactions from tax worries has also appeared elsewhere, including in a more comprehensive bill introduced this year by senators Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)

CEO of Titanium Blockchain Pleads Guilty in $21 Million Cryptocurrency Fraud Scheme

The CEO of Titanium Blockchain Infrastructure Services Inc. (TBIS) pleaded guilty Friday for his role in a cryptocurrency fraud scheme involving TBIS’s initial coin offering (ICO) that raised approximately $21 million from investors in the United States and overseas.

According to court documents, Michael Alan Stollery, 54, of Reseda, California, was the CEO and founder of TBIS, a purported cryptocurrency investment platform, and touted TBIS as a cryptocurrency investment opportunity, luring investors to purchase “BARs,” the cryptocurrency token or coin offered by TBIS’s ICO, through a series of false and misleading statements. Although he was required to do so, Stollery did not register the ICO regarding TBIS’s cryptocurrency investment offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), nor did he have a valid exemption from the SEC’s registration requirements.

US Rep. Josh Gottheimer Proposes $3M Boost to Treasury’s Crypto Crime-Fighting UnitU.S. Congressman Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) has proposed an amendment to the federal budget bill that would give the Treasury Department an additional $3 million to fight crypto-related crime in fiscal 2023.

Gottheimer has proposed that the Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intellience – the unit tasked with overseeing crypto crime and ransomware attacks – could use the money to buy better blockchain analysis tools, provide officers with better training and add investigative support to the unit.

‘Cryptojacking’ in Financial Sector Has Risen 269% This Year, SonicWall SaysThe number of “cryptojacking” cases across the financial sector has risen by 269% in the first half of 2022, according to a report by cybersecurity firm SonicWall.Cryptojacking is a type of cyberattack where hackers implant a piece of software on a victim’s computer that mine cryptocurrencies. Victims are often unaware of the exploit, which has contributed to the rise in cases, the report said.In previous years, government, healthcare and education sectors were the most common targets for cryptojacking, however there has been a “dramatic reshuffling” in 2022.