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Crypto investment giant Digital Currency Group (DCG) has filed for one of its executives to lobby on the company’s behalf.
An August 15th shows DCG’s vice president of public policy Julie Stitzel registering to be DCG’s representative to “support Bitcoin & blockchain companies by leveraging insights, network & access to capital.”
equity in a long list of the industry’s biggest heavyweights, including stablecoin-issuer Circle, analytics firm Chainalysis, crypto exchange COINBASE and digital asset manager Grayscale.
As of September 2021, DCG had $50 billion in assets under management.
The registration will be the group’s first official foray into lobbying and comes as the crypto industry clashes with regulators on several pressing issues.
Last week, the U.S. Treasury Department American citizens from using Tornado Cash, a popular coin mixing service designed to obfuscate transactions for the purpose of on-chain anonymity.
According to the Treasury, Tornado Cash is too often used to facilitate money laundering by criminals, including North Korean hackers. Its developer was subsequently arrested in the Netherlands.
The developments triggered a response from crypto advocacy group Coin Center, which is now considering a court challenge of the Treasury Department’s move.
“Tornado Cash Entity does not have a property interest in the Tornado Cash Application. It has no legal right to control that Application, and, perhaps more importantly, it has no physical ability to control that application. Moreover, that application is not even ‘property’ in any reasonable sense of the word.”
Also in the works is the bipartisan Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act of 2022 proposal.
Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee joined Arkansas Republican John Boozman to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to regulate crypto spot markets via a new asset class called “digital commodities.”
Says Boozman,
“This fast-growing industry is currently governed largely by a patchwork of regulations at the state level. That simply is not an effective way to protect consumers from fraud.
Our bill will empower the CFTC with exclusive jurisdiction over the digital commodities spot market, which will lead to more safeguards for consumers, market integrity and innovation in the digital commodities space.”
