Blockchain Legal Resource

On October 16, 2023, the SEC’s Division of Examinations released a reporting detailing its 2024 examination priorities. The document lays out the key risks, topics and priorities that the Division plans to focus on during its upcoming cycle of inspections and examinations of broker-dealers, investment advisers and other regulated securities intermediaries. Among the various areas of focus, once again risks related to crypto assets and blockchain will be an examination priority.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued Interpretive Letter 1174 on January 4, 2021, clarifying the authority of national banks and federal savings associations to buy, sell, and issue stablecoins and participate in independent node verification networks (INVNs) in order to conduct payment activities and other bank-permissible functions.

Wyoming recently awarded its second special-purpose depository institution (SPDI) charter to Avanti Bank. Kraken was the first institution to receive the newly created SPDI charter in September. As Wyoming had likely hoped when it passed a flurry of blockchain legislation, it appears that it is starting to take hold as a digital-asset-friendly banking state. The state has now chartered two new banks in less than two months; before September, the last newly chartered bank in Wyoming was approved over a decade ago.

On Monday, October 19, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced a $60 million civil money penalty against Larry Dean Harmon, the founder, administrator and primary operator of unlicensed convertible virtual currency “mixers” for alleged violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and its implementing regulations. Mr. Harmon allegedly operated and administered two separate convertible currencies from 2014 to 2020 without completing required registration with FinCEN.

On February 20, 2020, the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced a Bank Secrecy Act enforcement action against a federal savings bank (Bank). This is one of the first, if not the first, public enforcement actions against a bank related to banking cryptocurrency-related operations. Banks that currently provide banking services to cryptocurrency-related companies, or are considering providing banking services to such companies in the future, should carefully review this enforcement action and consider where the quality of the bank’s AML compliance program is commensurate with these high-risk customers.