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SEC, TRON Ask to Settle Case |
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Tron Foundation and Justin Sun filed a joint motion Wednesday asking a federal judge to pause the securities regulator's ongoing case against the crypto entrepreneur and his company.
The motion is similar to motions filed in the SEC's ongoing cases against Coinbase and Binance. In both cases, the parties said they were working toward a "potential resolution" of their cases. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said last week that the SEC agreed to drop its case against the exchange outright, pending commissioner approval. "In this case, the Parties submit that it is in each of their interests to stay this matter while they consider a potential resolution and agree that no party or non-party would be prejudiced by a stay," Wednesday's filing said. "Further, a stay is in the Court’s and the public’s interest because a resolution would conserve judicial resources by obviating the need for the Court to resolve the Defendants’ pending motion to dismiss the complaint." The SEC sued Tron, Sun and BitTorrent in July 2023, alleging the defendants engaged in market manipulation, fraud and issuing unregistered securities.
Sun tried to inflate the TRX token's volume through wash trading, the SEC alleged at the time. The regulator said Tron Foundation employees conducted over 600,000 wash trades.
District Court Judge Edgardo Ramos, who is overseeing the case, denied the SEC's effort to force Tron to file an additional response in pre-trial motions. Tron filed to motion to dismiss the lawsuit outright last year.
Sun is an adviser to World Liberty Financial, a company affiliated with U.S. President Donald Trump, after buying $30 million worth of the company's WLFI tokens. World Liberty, for its part, bought Tron's TRX token as part of its token treasury. |
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House Committee Aims to Kill DeFi Tax Rule |
The U.S. House of Representatives has taken the first significant move to erase the work of the Internal Revenue Service to impose a tax regime on decentralized financial (DeFi) platforms in the final days of former President Joe Biden's administration.
The House Ways and Means Committee — the panel responsible for overseeing the Treasury Department's IRS — advanced a resolution in a 26-16 vote to reverse the IRS transaction-reporting policy under the Congressional Review Act. Such an effort requires majority approval in both the House and Senate before a presidential signature would make the move final, and the matter now moves to the overall House. In December, the IRS had approved a system that the crypto industry says forces DeFi protocols into a reporting regime designed for brokers, threatening the way that such protocols work and also potentially including a wide range of entities that aren't brokers at all. Nearly every major name in the crypto sector signed onto a Blockchain Association letter last week calling for the elimination of this rule. Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, has fielded a Senate version of the CRA resolution to cut the IRS rule.
"We must pass this resolution to avoid this nightmare for American taxpayers and for the IRS," said Rep. Mike Carey, an Ohio Republican who has pressed for Congress to cut to rule, which he argued would overwhelm the tax agency.
Democrat Rep. Richard Neal from Massachusetts countered the Republican push.
"The bill before us today would repeal sensible and important Treasury regulations ensuring that taxpayers meet their tax filing obligations and do not skirt the law by selling crypto currency without reporting the gains," he said. "It's really that simple."
Eliminating the specific tax approach to decentralized crypto platforms would cut U.S. revenue by an estimated $3.9 billion over a decade.
Rep. Jason Smith, the Republican chairman of the committee from Missouri, accused the IRS of going behind "the letter of the law" when it approved the rule during Biden's final days in office. "Not only is it unfair, but it's unworkable," he said.
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1 of 2 CFTC Democrats Will Exit |
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) could have an even stronger Republican majority when the chairman picked by President Donald Trump arrives, with the announcement on Wednesday that Democratic Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero will step down after that expected confirmation. If Trump nominee Brian Quintenz, a former Republican commissioner at the agency, is approved by the U.S. Senate, the Democrat's exit will leave just Commissioner Kristin Johnson to represent the agency's minority party. This leadership shift would take place at a particularly meaningful moment for the agency, when its expected leading role in crypto is being worked out in Congress and past resistance to the industry is being stripped away with the already active overhaul of CFTC personnel. "History has shown how sound regulation plays a critical role in U.S. financial markets being the envy of the world, and I am honored to have played a part in promoting U.S. markets and protecting investors and customers," Goldsmith Romero said in a statement, noting she'll be ending a 23-year career in the federal government that also included prominent roles at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Treasury Department. Commissioner Johnson declined to discuss her fellow Democrat's plans, telling CoinDesk, "I don't want to comment on something that is still developing." The agency's acting chairman, Caroline Pham, praised the departing commissioner as "a thought leader in combatting fraud and addressing cybersecurity in new technologies such as AI and blockchain as sponsor of the CFTC’s Technology Advisory Committee," in a statement. The federal career path of Goldsmith Romero, noted as the first LGBTQ+ commissioner at the CFTC, shifted markedly after Trump's victory, because she'd previously been President Joe Biden's pick to run the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission, though the Senate never got around to voting on her nomination. |
Hackers Using Fake GitHub Code |
The GitHub code you use to build a trendy application or patch existing bugs might just be used to steal your bitcoin (BTC) or other crypto holdings, according to a Kaspersky report.
GitHub is popular tool among developers of all types, but even more so among crypto-focused projects, where a simple application may generate millions of dollars in revenue. The report warned users of a “GitVenom” campaign that’s been active for at least two years but is steadily on the rise, involving planting malicious code in fake projects on the popular code repository platform. The attack starts with seemingly legitimate GitHub projects — like making Telegram bots for managing bitcoin wallets or tools for computer games.
Each comes with a polished README file, often AI-generated, to build trust. But the code itself is a Trojan horse: For Python-based projects, attackers hide nefarious script after a bizarre string of 2,000 tabs, which decrypts and executes a malicious payload. For JavaScript, a rogue function is embedded in the main file, triggering the launch attack. Once activated, the malware pulls additional tools from a separate hacker-controlled GitHub repository. (A tab organizes code, making it readable by aligning lines. The payload is the core part of a program that does the actual work — or harm, in malware’s case.)
Once the system is infected, various other programs kick in to execute the exploit. A Node.js stealer harvests passwords, crypto wallet details, and browsing history, then bundles and sends them via Telegram. Remote access trojans like AsyncRAT and Quasar take over the victim’s device, logging keystrokes and capturing screenshots.
A “clipper” also swaps copied wallet addresses with the hackers’ own, redirecting funds. One such wallet netted 5 BTC — worth $485,000 at the time — in November alone.
Active for at least two years, GitVenom has hit users hardest in Russia, Brazil, and Turkey, though its reach is global, per Kaspersky.
The attackers keep it stealthy by mimicking active development and varying their coding tactics to evade antivirus software.
How can users protect themselves? By scrutinizing any code before running it, verifying the project’s authenticity, and being suspicious of overly polished READMEs or inconsistent commit histories. Because researchers don’t expect these attacks to stop anytime soon: “We expect these attempts to continue in the future, possibly with small changes in the TTPs,” Kaspersky concluded in its post. |
The Takeaway: War on Crypto Not Over |
By Renato Mariotti
In the wake of the appointment of a U.S. crypto czar and the announcement of comprehensive crypto legislation, many believe the era of “regulation by enforcement” in the U.S. is over. But while the SEC and CFTC now have crypto-friendly chairmen, both state regulators and Attorneys General are poised to take their place as aggressive crypto enforcers.
For years, the SEC’s aggressive “regulation by enforcement” approach stifled the growth of the crypto industry and caused many to call for a comprehensive regulatory framework that would put an end to the “war on crypto” once and for all. For this reason, many in the industry banded together to lend their support to pro-crypto candidates. That strategy bore fruit. Donald Trump was elected as the first president to tout his support for the crypto industry, despite his somewhat antagonistic stance towards crypto during his previous term. Since taking office, Trump appointed David Sacks as the nation’s first “Crypto Czar,” established a President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets and appointed interim SEC and CFTC Chairs that have already been expressing their support for the crypto industry. But those federal changes won’t end aggressive enforcement actions from state regulators who face public pressure to take action to reign in crypto. Many in the industry have already faced aggressive enforcement from regulators like the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), which recently obtained a $37 million settlement from a crypto lending platform. Regulators like NYDFS were aggressive even when the SEC engaged in aggressive tactics against crypto, so when the SEC scales back its efforts, you can expect them to fill in the void.
Other states are following New York’s lead. In late 2023, California enacted the Digital Financial Assets Law, which empowered its Department of Financial Protection and Innovation to license and regulate digital assets. And the Illinois legislature recently began to consider a new bill called the Digital Assets and Consumer Protection Act that would empower the state to regulate any company engaged in “digital asset business activity” with an Illinois resident.
Read the full op-ed here.
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