The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) faced a reality check when a U.S. district court judge advised the regulator and crypto exchange Binance.US to negotiate a deal bilaterally rather than freezing all assets of the exchange. The resulting agreement outlines measures for Binance.US to prevent any access by Binance officials to private keys of wallets, hardware wallets or root access to Binance.US’s Amazon Web Services tools. Additionally, the U.S.-based crypto trading platform will disclose comprehensive information on business expenses, including estimated costs, in the coming weeks.
Documents publicly released last week confirmed that SEC employees were concerned about one of the regulator’s top executives’ speech undermining the idea that Ether is security. Meanwhile, a 2018 video resurfaced of now-SEC Chair Gary Gensler confidently stating that Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) are not securities.
In other news, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority has reportedly pressured major banks, including HSBC and Standard Chartered, to accept crypto exchanges as clients. The European Parliament has also passed the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, which would regulate governance and oversight of AI technologies in the European Union, while certain types of AI services and products would be prohibited or limited. Lastly, U.S. Senators Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal introduced a bill to eliminate special protections for AI companies currently afforded to online computer services providers under the Communications Decency Act of 1996.