This week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission might approve spot ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs), the House of Representatives may vote in favor of a crypto market structure bill, the company behind a decentralized exchange is arguing with the SEC, and that's all just in the U.S. All of these topics will come up at Consensus 2024 next week.

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Policy Week

The narrative

Consensus, CoinDesk's annual conference, kicks off next Wednesday in Austin, Texas. We'll have a number of policymakers and industry participants engaging in the policy world. We have a few sessions on Wednesday, May 29, and Friday, May 31, but the bulk of this will take place on Thursday, May 30, when we hold our annual Policy Summit.

Why it matters

The policy summit is focused on, well, policy issues. And they're important. On Tuesday alone, we saw an intense discussion about a pending House vote on possibly the first crypto market structure bill to make it through one of Congress' legislative bodies, the possibility that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission might approve spot ether exchange-traded funds, and Uniswap Labs' response to a Wells Notice sent to it by the SEC.

Clearly, there's a lot going on. My goal is to see what we can learn from our panels of speakers next week.

Breaking it down

CoinDesk is holding its annual Policy Summit stage at Consensus 2024 next week in Austin, Texas (still need a ticket? Coupon code below!).

During the policy summit, we'll hear from SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce and CFTC Commissioner Summer Mersinger, Sen. Bill Hagerty and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, representatives from the IRS and Senate candidates.

The agenda includes issues such as the upcoming U.S. election, current policy within key regulatory agencies, the European Union's Markets in Crypto Assets framework, taxes, and more. The crypto industry has discussed or tried to lobby on each of these issues over the past few years, and we'll see more engagement on them in the coming days.

We're kicking the summit off with Commissioners Peirce and Mersinger. I'll moderate this opening session with the commissioners before we turn things over to my colleague Camomile for a session on MiCA and its implementation later this year. Jesse Hamilton and Cheyenne Ligon are also set to moderate important discussions through the course of the day.

Outside of the main policy summit, we're also going to hear from senior policy officials, like Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who chairs the Senate Finance Committee. We'll talk about issues like the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network's proposed rulemaking designating mixers as primary money laundering concerns, and a panel focused on mixers and privacy will delve into both ongoing legal cases against developers and the broader issue of balancing the right to transact privately with the very real concern that illicit actors – like certain rogue nations – might be taking advantage of privacy tools for malign ends.

We'll talk about the role corporate monitors might play in crypto moving forward, after Binance's landmark settlement with U.S. officials that will see it reporting to a monitor for the next few years.

Panelists will look at how central bank digital currencies are actually being developed and used in countries around the world, separating hypothetical concerns from practical realities.

Representatives from the IRS will walk through what they're doing now to further develop the tax agency's approach to digital assets, and another speaker will discuss the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's global crypto tax reporting framework.

Crypto broker Prometheum will take us over its soft launch of a custody service, what that means for the industry and where it's going next.

Senate candidates Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) and John Deaton (R-Mass.) will take the stage, as will presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. And we'll hear from many more policy – and other – speakers over the course of the event.

I'm moderating conversations with Senators Wyden and Hagerty, Commissioners Peirce and Mersinger and Under Secretary Nelson. If you have a question you think may be interesting, feel free to respond to this email and send those my way. I might ask the best ones on stage.

Stories you may have missed

• Binance Exec Tigran Gambaryan Denied Bail by Nigerian Court: Tigran Gambaryan is continuing to face charges as a representative of Binance, with an arraignment being postponed to May 22 after Nigerian authorities brought another charge against Binance by way of Gambaryan.
• Craig Wright Lied to UK Court 'Extensively and Repeatedly,' Judge Writes: U.K. Judge James Mellor published a written judgment detailing his reasoning for ruling that Craig Wright is not Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. According to the judge, Wright "lied 'extensively and repeatedly.'"
• Uniswap Labs Urges SEC to Drop Pending Enforcement Action in Wells Response: Uniswap Labs doesn't want to be sued by the SEC.
• U.S. Senate Votes to Kill SEC's Crypto Accounting Policy, Testing Biden's Veto Threat: The Senate voted in favor of a Congressional Review Act bill that would overturn the SEC's Staff Accounting Bulletin 121, with a 60-38 vote. Eleven Democrats and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who caucuses with the Dems, joined 48 Republicans in voting for the bill, which U.S. President Joe Biden said he'd veto.
• Hong Kong Expands Cross-Border Digital Yuan Trial, Allows Residents to Set Up E-CNY Wallets: The Hong Kong Monetary Authority and People's Bank of China expanded a pilot for the digital yuan to let Hong Kong residents use e-CNY.
• U.S. Treasury Says It Wants to Better Money Laundering Regulations Around Crypto, Other Illicit Finance: The U.S. Treasury Department published a national strategy for fighting terror financing, saying it wanted to close anti-money laundering gaps within the U.S. and in other nations.
• Leading Crypto-Policy Academic in Washington to Open Disclosure Firm Bluprynt: Georgetown Law Professor Chris Brummer, who's known within crypto circles for his annual DC Fintech Week conference, launched his own firm focused on crypto disclosure services.
• Tornado Cash Developer Alexey Pertsev Appeals Guilty Verdict: What the headline says.

This week

Tuesday

• 14:00 UTC (10:00 a.m. EDT) The Senate Energy Committee held a hearing on energy needs by resource-intensive industries.

Wednesday

• 16:00 UTC (12:00 p.m. EDT) The House of Representatives is expected to start floor discussion around the FIT21 bill, with votes starting around 2:00 p.m.

Thursday

• 12:30 UTC (8:30 a.m. EDT) SEC Chair Gary Gensler is scheduled to speak at the Investment Company Institute Leadership Summit.

Elsewhere:

• (Tedium) Last week, Google announced it was rolling out its large language model walled garden effort to all U.S. users and beyond. For those of us who actually want useful results though, Google's also got a "web" option that people can set as their default browser search engine if they want.
• (Fortune) Crypto broker Prometheum says it's soft-launched its long-delayed custody product, starting with Ethereum.

If you’ve got thoughts or questions on what I should discuss next week or any other feedback you’d like to share, feel free to email me at [email protected] or find me on Twitter @nikhileshde.

You can also join the group conversation on Telegram.

See ya’ll next week!