US Senate advances landmark crypto bill before heading on August recess

U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune moved on Saturday to advance a major bill that would create a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies which, if passed, would ​mark a huge victory for U.S. President Donald Trump and the crypto ‌industry.

Thune, a Republican, early Saturday morning filed to set up a key procedural vote on the Clarity Act when the Senate returns from its August recess in mid-September, potentially paving the way for a full floor vote ​on the bill, according to the U.S. Senate

The move suggests ​Senate Republican leaders believe they may yet be able to wrangle the ⁠60 votes needed for the bill to pass, despite continued opposition by many ​Democrats. Currently, the bill needs the support of at least eight Democrats and all of the ​Senate's voting Republicans for it to pass.

by Reuters

SEC drops insider trading suit against ex-healthcare executive pardoned by Trump

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Friday it was moving to dismiss, opens new tab an insider trading, opens new tab lawsuit against Terren ​Peizer, a former healthcare executive who was convicted of ‌insider trading by a federal jury in 2024 and then pardoned by President Donald Trump.

Here are the details:
-- In 2023, Peizer, 65, the founder and former ​chief executive of healthcare company Ontrak, was charged by the Department ​of Justice with insider trading.
-- The SEC also launched civil ⁠insider trading charges against him in a parallel action.
-- At the ​time, authorities called the charges groundbreaking. It was the first criminal ​case involving the use of a pre-arranged stock-selling program designed to help shield executives from such charges.
-- Peizer sold more than $20 million of Ontrak stock between ​May and August 2021 while in possession of material non-public ​negative information related to the company's largest customer, authorities said.
-- He was convicted of ‌insider ⁠trading by a federal jury in Los Angeles in 2024. Jurors found him guilty of two counts of insider trading and one count of securities fraud.
-- He was sentenced in 2025 to 3.5 ​years in prison.
-- Trump ​pardoned him in ⁠January this year.

by Reuters

Investors Want Quarterly Reports, Unfavorable Results and All

To test what the proposal could mean for investors, Bloomberg created semiannual sales figures for S&P 1500 companies going back to 2010, adding revenue from two consecutive quarters to create a half-year result. The analysis then compared each company’s quarterly year-over-year revenue growth with its corresponding half-year growth rate to see how semiannual reporting would have masked significant changes.

The analysis of more than 2,500 US companies shows that a shift to half-yearly reporting would have obscured bad quarters at more than twice the rate of good quarters each year, on average. The effect was more significant during times of heightened volatility, like the pandemic, when as much as 15% of material quarterly revenue declines in a year would have been masked by switching to semiannual reporting. That’s compared to as much as 7% of material quarterly increases that would have been absorbed into negative half-year results.

by Bloomberg

SPAC King Attorney Weighs Selling Stake in His Own NYC Law Firm

A New York lawyer known for advising clients on novel investment vehicles is exploring selling a stake in his firm.

Douglas Ellenoff has been meeting with investors, accountants, and ethics lawyers to examine methods of accessing capital without violating US regulations banning non-lawyer ownership of firms, he said in an interview Thursday. His firm, Ellenoff Grossman & Schole, is weighing the formation of a management services organization, a vehicle used to inject cash into professional services businesses.

“Right now, law firms don’t have an equity value for partners,” Ellenoff said. “You have points that position you for a level of income participation, but your ownership doesn’t really have secondary market value. MSOs allow partners to create long-term equity value for themselves in addition to the annual compensation they might be getting.”

by Bloomberg Law

The Atkins Diet, Surrender by Design: One Lonely Asset Freeze, a Recycled Fraud Unit, and the Coming Dark Age of SEC Enforcement

Two facts emerged this summer that tell you everything you need to know about where the SEC's Division of Enforcement is headed — and the destination is bleaker than even the agency's harshest critics imagined.

Fact one: Since Paul Atkins was sworn in on April 21, 2025, through today, the SEC has obtained an asset freeze in exactly one case filed during his chairmanship — and even that one was by consent, not contested.

Fact two: On August 5, 2026, the SEC unveiled, with great fanfare, a shiny new Financial Reporting and Accounting Unit — a reboot of a specialized accounting-fraud team the agency already tried twice — and then quietly buried twice. (I was there and watched it happen both times.)

Do not read these two facts as a mixed signal — one discouraging, one hopeful. They are the same warning, delivered twice.

The first proves the SEC has unilaterally disarmed, surrendering the temporary restraining order and the emergency asset freeze — the most feared weapons in its arsenal, the tools that for decades stopped frauds mid-theft and froze stolen money before it vanished offshore. The second proves that the agency's answer to the most catastrophic enforcement collapse in its history is a press release and a redrawn org chart.

by John Reed Stark on LinkedIn