
Lewis Cohen
6.2K posts

Lewis Cohen
@NYcryptolawyer
Living on reds, vitamin C and blockchain (but not animals 🌱). Speaks only for self. A tweet does not legal advice or an endorsement make. @CahillNXT


🚨NEW: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon took aim at the Senate's crypto market structure bill today, arguing it "doesn't do anything for AML/BSA" and provides "almost no legal protections." When asked for comment, a spokesperson for @SenLummis told me: "The banks can’t deal with a bipartisan compromise on stablecoin yield and are making completely false claims about BSA/AML as a last ditch attempt to poke holes in a solid piece of legislation that protects consumers. Fear of competition always brings out an interesting side of people and that’s all this is.”

In my first public remarks as @CFTC Chairman, I made clear that the agency would use the tools at its disposal to onshore crypto asset perpetuals. Today, the @CFTC delivered on that commitment. This morning, the @CFTC took historic action to permit the listing of a true bitcoin perpetual contract by a CFTC-registered exchange, charting a path for one of the most liquid segments of the crypto asset markets to exist within the US regulatory framework.



What is the CLARITY Act? How does it protect the 70 million Americans who hold crypto? What does it change about how projects operate? This @LawofCodeFM podcast explains the history of U.S. digital asset regulation, why regulation-by-enforcement failed and what CLARITY solves, plus remaining steps for this to become law. Featured: @NYcryptolawyer, @milesjennings, @SH_Brennan, @KyleBligen, @millercwl, Dugan Bliss and snippets from @BillHughesDC, @thatgerald. By the end of this episode, I promise you'll be in the 99th percentile for understanding the CLARITY Act, regardless of whether you're a lawyer, builder or operator. Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 4:46 Explaining market structure 6:05 @milesjennings on regulatory distortion 10:43 Predecessor bills (RFIA, FIT21) 13:35 Senate Banking markup takeaways @millercwl 15:46 SEC & CFTC 20:37 The Securities Act of 1933 23:07 The Howey Test 25:26 @NYcryptolawyer's Ineluctable Modality of Securities Law 28:51 SEC enforcement 32:32 Why SEC rulemaking isn't enough 37:36 Titles of CLARITY 40:00 Digital commodities 47:29 Howey principles @NYcryptolawyer 54:10 Promoters: originators 58:18 Promoters: related persons 1:04:13 Token taxonomy @milesjennings 1:11:02 Ancillary asset requirements 1:19:34 The certification process 1:28:32 Remaining hurdles for CLARITY 1:34:50 Stablecoin yield 1:38:45 Ethics @KyleBligen 1:45:50 Tax consequences @CryptoTaxGuyETH 1:48:54 Thanking people working on the bill, such as @SenLummis, @gillibrandny, @SenatorTimScott, @SenatorHagerty, @SenThomTillis, @MarkWarner, @SenRubenGallego, f , their staffs & many, many others. Nothing in this podcast is legal or investment advice.

🏦 JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon warns stablecoins could become a "huge problem" and says he is not happy with the Clarity Act. 🎙️ When asked about Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong representing the industry, Dimon said, "He's full of sh!t."



🚨NEW: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon took aim at the Senate's crypto market structure bill today, arguing it "doesn't do anything for AML/BSA" and provides "almost no legal protections." When asked for comment, a spokesperson for @SenLummis told me: "The banks can’t deal with a bipartisan compromise on stablecoin yield and are making completely false claims about BSA/AML as a last ditch attempt to poke holes in a solid piece of legislation that protects consumers. Fear of competition always brings out an interesting side of people and that’s all this is.”

The next window for digital asset legislation after this Congress is likely 2030. Until then, developers remain exposed with no legal protections, and law enforcement remains without the tools to hold bad actors accountable. The Clarity Act solves both.


For too long, the SEC was at odds with new technology and innovation, pushing entrepreneurs offshore. That era is over. Under President Trump’s leadership, and alongside colleagues across the Admin and Congress, we are delivering much needed clarity to digital asset markets.

Congress is finally close to setting clear, common-sense rules for digital assets. The Clarity Act protects everyday users and ensures American innovation doesn't get pushed overseas. Don't let red tape crush innovation. Tell your Senator to vote YES: digitalchamber.org/clarity-act

Donald Trump is gutting a crypto watchdog so the Trump family and their friends can enrich themselves. We need crypto legislation that stops this corruption and protects Americans from getting scammed.

🚨 NEW LEGAL ATTACK ON SATOSHI’S COINS @SaniExp first posted about this new case, but we have covered since the fall and now we are comprehensively unpacking 3 anonymous parties want a NY court to grant them ~3.8M BTC ($293B), incl. coins long believed to be Satoshi

SEC Commissioner @HesterPeirce gave a short but pointed speech yesterday at a Georgetown Law conference on privacy-enhancing technologies. In short, she said the quiet part out loud (thankfully): regulators have spent too long treating privacy demands as suspicious, when in fact privacy-preserving financial technology protects people from bad actors at least as much as it shields them from shoulder-peering regulators. Privacy and investor protection, she argues, are not in conflict. The most interesting idea in the speech was that transfer agents currently must record the name and physical address of securities holders. She suggested giving transfer agents the flexibility to record instead that securities reside at a public blockchain address, which by design carries no personally identifiable information. That would eliminate a whole category of PII honeypots and reduce the data exposure risk that comes with holding tokenized securities today. And the idea certainly makes the MOAR REPORTING types shudder with disgust. For self-custody wallets, the implication is significant. It would remove one of the structural barriers to holding tokenized securities outside a custodial intermediary. It could give them another meaningful feature. For DeFi interfaces, the more directly relevant part of the speech was the invitation Peirce extended to builders: if you have technologies that can accomplish KYC and AML compliance objectives while minimizing PII collection and storage, she wants to hear from you through the Crypto Task Force. That is a real opening for the kind of portable, on-chain KYC attestation model that makes the most sense for non-custodial interfaces at scale, where collecting and warehousing underlying customer data is architecturally awkward and creates liability exposure the interface should not have. It is one commissioner's speech, and that commissioner is leaving (😢), but it is notable that a sitting SEC commissioner is actively reframing privacy-preserving wallet and interface design as a feature worth accommodating rather than a compliance gap worth closing. sec.gov/newsroom/speec…

