On July 22, 2020, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”) published an interpretive letter clarifying that providing cryptocurrency custody services to customers is a permissible activity for national banks and federal savings associations.  This letter marks an important milestone in the expansion of permissible banking activities related to digital assets.…

On June 25, 2020, a federal district court in the Eastern District of Virginia held that a bank must produce in discovery a report generated by its cybersecurity forensic investigator following a 2019 data breach involving unauthorized access to personal information of customers and individuals who had applied for accounts.[1]  Even though the report was produced at the direction of outside counsel, the court rejected arguments that the forensic report is protected from disclosure…

On March 24, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) released its Final Interpretive Guidance on Actual Delivery for Digital Assets (“Final Interpretation”), addressing longstanding questions regarding which digital asset transactions could be deemed “retail commodity transactions” under the Commodity Exchange Act (“CEA”).  The Final Interpretation comes two years after the CFTC issued proposed interpretive guidance (“Proposed Interpretation”).…

On January 7, 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (“OCIE”) released its 2020 Examination Priorities (“2020 Priorities”).  While at first blush the themes appear consistent with and predictable from their 2019 priorities, on closer read OCIE has provided some new insights and some unexpected focus areas.  The themes for the 2020 Priorities are:  retail investors, information security, financial technology (“Fintech”) and innovation (including digital assets and electronic…

On October 11, 2019, the leaders of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and Securities and Exchange Commission issued a joint statement to remind businesses that engage in digital asset activities of their anti-money laundering (“AML”) and countering the financing of terrorism (“CFT”) obligations under the Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”). As market participants increasingly become involved with digital assets and related activities or services, the agencies clarified that their regulatory treatment is…

On September 18, 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) filed its first civil suit alleging violations of broker-dealer registration requirements in U.S. digital asset markets.  In a case filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the SEC alleged that Defendants ICOBox and its founder, Nikolay Evdokimov, illegally conducted an unregistered public securities offering for their 2017 initial coin offering (“ICO”), and have operated an unregistered brokerage service facilitating the…

On July 25, 2019, staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) granted its second no-action letter in the digital asset space to Pocketful of Quarters, Inc. (“POQ”), permitting POQ to sell digital tokens (“Quarters”) recorded on the Ethereum blockchain without satisfying registration requirements under the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Acts”). Like the SEC’s prior no-action letter to TurnKey Jet, Inc. (“TKJ”), which permitted TKJ to sell…