The CoinGeek Pulse Episode 37: Coinbase pays $6.5M fine, FATF updates guidance, Hester Peirce talks regulation & innovation

This week’s top story, Coinbase agrees to pay $6.5 million fine over alleged false reporting and wash trading. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) released an announcement confirming that the exchange had agreed to settle charges and to pay millions of dollars of penalties.

According to the CFTC, Coinbase delivered inaccurate reports concerning transactions in digital assets on its GDAX platform, now Coinbase Pro, from the period of January 2015 to September 2018. The CFTC adds that the falsified data and information potentially contributed in a perceived volume and liquidity of digital assets including BTC “that was false, misleading and inaccurate.”

Coinbase may have settled the fine, but it did not admit fault. The firm has also delayed its direct stock listing until April.

Still on the topic of digital assets, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has updated its guidance on the risk-based approach to digital assets and service providers. 

The global anti-money laundering watchdog released the original Guidance in 2019. The revised guidance in six main areas comes following a 12-month review of the initial release, including clarity on the definitions of VA and VASP; how the FATF Standards apply to so-called stablecoins; the risks and potential risk mitigants for peer-to-peer transactions; updated guidance on the licensing and registration of VASPs; the public and private sectors on the implementation of the ‘travel rule’; and include Principles of Information-Sharing and Co-operation amongst VASP Supervisors.

The updated guidance, though not legislative, aims “to maintain a level playing field for VASPs” as well as “minimizing the opportunity for regulatory arbitrage between sectors and countries.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Hester Peirce talks about digital asset regulation and innovation in the latest episode of Blockchain Policy Matters.

Bitcoin Association Founding President Jimmy Nguyen caught up with the SEC Commissioner to discuss the current U.S. regulatory landscape. Peirce explained instead of tightening the regulatory approach, regulation could help encourage innovation and growth. She also took note of not ruling out positive things coming out of the private sector.

Peirce suggested that the SEC needs to be giving clear guidance to the industry now, rather than in retrospect. She also added the role of the U.S. in building the foundation of digital assets regulation for the best and the brightest of the world.

“I think we are strongest when we are the place where people love to come and innovate… I think that (the) United States really needs to keep its edge and needs to be the go-to place. And if we don’t have a regulatory structure that facilitates that, we’re going to see people go elsewhere,” explains Peirce.

Still with Bitcoin Association, the Switzerland-based firm has announced this week the launch of the Introduction to Bitcoin Development course at Bitcoin SV Academy.

The course equips application developers with the skills, tools and techniques required to build applications on the BSV network. This covers Bitcoin as a data protocol and includes reading, writing and advanced functionalities with the Bitcoin ledger, payment protocols, token protocols and smart contracts.

The course is free and can be accessed at bitcoinsv.academy

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