Welcome to the New and Improved Daily Update!

Musk Joins Moguls to Kill S.E.C. ‘Gag Orders’ at the Supreme Court

Mr. Musk is now part of a group of executives who are supporting a petition filed by Barry Romeril, a former chief financial officer of Xerox, asking the Supreme Court to review a 2003 deal he made with the S.E.C. that required him to stay forever silent about a fraud case against him.

Mr. Romeril’s petition argues that the requirement violates his constitutional rights, and that “no act of Congress authorizes such a sweeping restriction on freedom of speech.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said he waived that right to deny the allegations.

Warren Buffett gives his most expansive explanation for why he doesn’t believe in bitcoin

“If you said… for a 1% interest in all the farmland in the United States, pay our group $25 billion, I’ll write you a check this afternoon,” Buffett said. ”[For] $25 billion I now own 1% of the farmland. [If] you offer me 1% of all the apartment houses in the country and you want another $25 billion, I’ll write you a check, it’s very simple. Now if you told me you own all of the bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25 I wouldn’t take it because what would I do with it? I’d have to sell it back to you one way or another. It isn’t going to do anything. The apartments are going to produce rent and the farms are going to produce food."

Elon Musk loses bid to end ‘Twitter Sitter’ deal with SEC

Elon Musk may soon own Twitter Inc. but the billionaire won’t be able to shake his “Twitter Sitter.”

A judge on Wednesday rejected Musk’s request to ditch his 2018 deal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that required a company lawyer to screen all his Tesla Inc.-related tweets. The Tesla CEO, who appears to have clinched his bid to buy Twitter, had accused the SEC of harassing him and claimed the agreement violated his free-speech rights.

Crypto industry would get overseen by the CFTC, its preferred regulator, under new bill

As Washington policymakers wrangle over how to oversee cryptocurrency, a new bipartisan proposal would give the rapidly expanding sector a victory by handing authority to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), seen by the industry as a more benevolent regulator.

The bill — introduced Thursday by Republican Reps. Glenn Thompson (Pa.) and Tom Emmer (Minn.) and Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna (Calif.) and Darren Soto (Fla.) — would allow crypto trading platforms to register with the CFTC.

“We Know Wrongful Trading When We See It” – Some Observations Concerning the Recent Senate Hearing on the ITPA

Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs held a hearing on the Insider Trading Prohibition Act (ITPA), which passed the house with bipartisan support in May of last year. Some prominent scholars, like Professor Stephen Bainbridge, have criticized the ITPA as ambiguous in its text and overbroad in its application, while others, like Professor John Coffee, have expressed concern that it does not go far enough (mostly because the bill retains the “personal benefit” requirement for tipper-tippee liability).

Coinbase (COIN) Cracks Down on Front-Running of New Crypto Listings

In a blog post Thursday, Chief Executive Officer Brian Armstrong said Coinbase is implementing new procedures, so people wouldn’t be able to guess, by examining Coinbase’s blockchain activity or playing around with its software, if it’s considering listing new tokens.

“While this is public data, it isn’t data that all customers can easily access, so we strive to remove these information asymmetries,” Armstrong wrote.