Is ETH’s Institutional Era Coming?

All three protocols are accused of illegally offering leveraged and margined retail commodity transactions using digital assets. Additionally, Opyn and Deridex faced further charges for failing to register with the CFTC and failing to adopt a customer identification program as required by the Bank Secrecy Act.

While Opyn currently geofences US users from the protocol, the CFTC stated these steps needed to be more sufficient from blocking Americans from the platform, likely because it can be circumvented via VPN, and thus does not preclude them from regulatory action.

Concerningly, the CFTC went after 0x for tokens issued by a third party that offered leveraged exposure on digital assets, leading some on crypto Twitter to question whether enforcement actions against other permissionless DEXs, like Uniswap, could be expected to follow… 

This move from the CFTC runs contrary to the decision of a New York federal court to dismiss a class action against Uniswap last week. In it, the Court found that protocol devs are not liable when others misuse their platforms established for lawful purposes and concluded that the concerns raised by this case “are better addressed to Congress than this Court.”

3. FTX Digital Markets Co-CEO Pleads Guilty

Ryan Salame, former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday morning to two counts of criminal charges – one concerning campaign finance violations and the other for conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter.

Prosecutors charged Salame for making tens of millions of dollars in political contributions in his name using funds secretly sourced from Alameda that were categorized as loans, but Salame understood would not be repaid.

Under the agreement, Salame faces up to 10 years in prison and has agreed to a $1.5B asset forfeiture order. Before sentencing next March, Salame must forfeit two properties and a Porsche, returning $5.5M to the FTX debtors and paying a further $6M fine to the US government.

4. Visa Expands Payments Settlement to Solana

Global payments giant Visa announced the expansion of its stablecoin settlement capabilities to Solana last Tuesday.

The partnership will enable Visa to send USDC payouts on Solana to merchant acquirers, like Nuvei and Worldpay, who can then route USDC payments to their end merchants. Solana was selected due to its high performance and ability to send and receive stablecoins at higher speeds and lower costs than competitive chains.

Visa first began testing how it could use USDC inside its treasury operations in a successful 2021 pilot with Crypto.com. The CEX now uses USDC to fulfill settlement on its Visa cards offered in Australia and intends to roll out the capability in other markets.

5. Corporate Crypto Now Reported at Fair Value

On Wednesday, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), responsible for creating America’s default accounting standards, unanimously voted to require companies with digital assets to record their holdings at fair value.

Under the previous standard, crypto assets received the same treatment as intangible assets. This meant that companies were required to record impairment to the value of their investments should the market value of crypto holdings fall below the recorded book value but could not record gains when the price rebounded.

New rules are expected to be published by the year-end, and adoption will be mandatory for all American companies – public and private – during the 2025 calendar year.

Michael Saylor, the executive chair of MicroStrategy (a sizable corporate holder of Bitcoin), celebrated the outcome of the FASB’s vote, tweeting that the rule update “eliminates a major impediment to corporate adoption of Bitcoin as a treasury asset.”