SEC to Go Scorched Earth?

Plus a new institutional Bitcoin adoption fund

Author

Nathaniel Whittemore
September 20, 2023

The Breakdown First Five - Wednesday September 20, 2023

Welcome back to The Breakdown First Five — the 5 most interesting and/or important stories in bitcoin, crypto, and markets to start your day.

5. Unbalanced

Venerable DeFi platform Balancer has warned users not to interact with its front end after its website suffered a DNS attack. The attacked redirected users to a phishing site. Around $240,000 worth of assets were drained before the warning went out. The Balancer vault and protocol funds were unaffected. As of this morning the issue was still being worked on.

4. Euro Troubles

European Binance users are reporting difficulties processing withdrawals using SEPA, the continent’s bank transfer payment rails. Binance claims the the issue is with Paysafe who decided to put a “very small portion” of users through an “early closure review.” Paysafe is set to withdraw services from Binance on Monday. Binance said less than 0.1% of users are affects but a large amount of user complaints are visible across Twitter.

3. Nomura Orange Pilled

Nomura has to launched its first crypto structured product. Laser Digital, the crypto wing of the Japanese Bank, is now offering the Bitcoin Adoption Fund to institutional clients. The fund will provide “long-only” exposure to Bitcoin. Laser Digital was launched last year and has so far been focused on making venture investments and building out infrastructure. The firm will custody assets with another Nomura subsidiary, Komainu, which was launched in 2018.

2. Global Crypto Rules

The top executive at the German regulator BaFin has called for global crypto rules to be established in the wake of G20 meetings. He said that European regulations marked significant progress but that “global rules should also apply to niche financial centers.” The implication was that offshore jurisdictions should be brought in line with global consensus regulations. G20 leaders endorsed FSB recommendations earlier this month.

1. SEC Coming for DeFi

SEC head of Crypto Assets David Hirsch has said the agency will keep going after crypto exchanges. He said the regulator still has numerous open investigations against crypto firms and to expect more enforcement actions soon. DeFi protocols apparently won’t get a pass, with Hirsh stating that “adding the label of DeFi'' won't deter the SEC from brining enforcement actions.

Thanks for reading -NLW