Law Decoded: Hodling like a state

El Salvador’s effects, Coinbase’s woes, and the digital euro’s prospects.

Too much is happening in the realm of crypto policy and regulation to leave the biggest developments of each week without a roundup and at least some conceptual reflection. Starting today, we are getting back to decoding crypto law and everything around it that is worth decoding.

Who’s next to follow El Salvador?

Eyeballs galore will be pinned to the great Salvadoran experiment from now on. People with PhDs in economics and applied statistics within central banks and research institutes will chase every accessible data point that could be remotely helpful in making sense of the effects of Bitcoin’s adoption as legal tender.

Obviously, not many nation states are poised to follow suit in the foreseeable future, but there are plenty lessons to be learned for states on every step of the global financial food chain.

While the way various jurisdictions process the precedent of El Salvador heavily depends on where they stand in the incumbent monetary order, it has surely spurred virtually everyone’s thinking on crypto regulation and CBDC deployment, and legalizing cryptocurrency payments.

Regulators behaving sketchy

Much of Coinbase’s chagrin seems to boil down to the fact that the SEC’s scrutiny fell on them rather than competitors who’d had similar lending products operating for months. There is case to be made, however, that for the industry it could be a good thing if the precedent-setting clash on the matter of crypto lending programs takes place between the SEC and Coinbase.

Diem struggles, digital euro doing fine

Facebook reportedly continues the lobbying effort to advance its longstanding plan of launching a private stablecoin, Diem. The effort, however, faces powerful opposition among officials in Treasury and Congress.

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