1/ The Federal Reserve, the FDIC and the OCC just released this devastating Joint Statement on Crypto-Asset Risks to Banking Organizations.
federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pre… 2/ They state "[i]t is important that risks related to the crypto-asset sector that cannot be mitigated or controlled do not migrate to the banking system." However, they don't describe what mitigation factors or controls they have in mind.

1/ The FTX battle between the FTX US bankruptcy CEO (John Ray) and The Bahamas continues. Below is 12/30 filing by FTX Debtors' objection in Delaware, which goes after The Bahamas aggressively to counter the request for access to FTX info
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco… 2/ The Securities Commission of The Bahamas issues a press release to respond to the filing on 1/2 to correct what it calls "material misstatements" made.
scb.gov.bs/wp-content/upl…

1/ @USTreasury’s sanctioning of @TornadoCash raises good discussions as to whether a software tool like a mixer is appropriate to ban as a “bad actor” with many claiming this is a new era of overreaching tech and privacy reg that has never been seen before. Not so young Jedi…. /2 Read “The Crypto Wars” by Craig Jarvis, which is a political history of digital encryption. Governments warned that encryption would be used by terrorists and foreign spies. We had DES, cypherpunks…

1/ Waiting on pin’s and needle’s to read the #SEC settlement with @BlockFi reported by @business over its crypto lending product 2/ Bloomberg reported a $100 m settlement and agreement to not take in US investors because SEC deems the lending product to be a #security

1/ Getting lots of DM questions about attorney privilege / work product regarding the #Ripple judge decision to allow the release of 3 legal memos to Ripple purportedly analyzing whether XRP was a security (memos not released until Feb 19). 2/ Whether legal advice is privileged/work product that is protected is not a uniform analysis. For federal cases, the law of the circuit in which the case sits applies. While most federal cases are consistent in this area, there are tons of nuances.

1/Judge ordered two law firm memo’s from 2012 to #XRP to be unsealed and released by Feb 14. #XRP has argued memos concluded it was not @security while #SEC claims@the memos show XRP was forewarned that its proposed sale of digital tokens would violate federal securities laws. 2/ A few lessons here. 1) always remind your client NOT to send privileged memos around to third parties (which XRP did here, 2) as a lawyer, allays assume that any writing to a client may end up in court some day.

1/ SEC chair #Gensler’s speech at the Securities Enforcement Forum yesterday if you missed it. Quoting the first SEC chair Joseph Kennedy - apparently are at war with #crypto and it is just a bunch of buzzwords for the same old thing. sec.gov/news/speech/ge… /2 Gensler should read up on his history and not just throw around quotes. Kennedy was a pragmatist who had to manage the zealous enforcement reformers in the SEC. Good article to read on the #SEC founding here: sechistorical.org/museum/galleri…