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Treasury department officials are wrangling with how to focus a coming set of crypto tax rules.

Lightning Labs’ new liquidity marketplace, Lightning Pool, has seen more early-stage growth than its creators expected.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance issued a no-action letter on Wednesday to a social media company that wants to sell an in-house, Ethereum-based token.

The letter, dated November 19, is addressed to IMVU, Inc., which offers an array of social-focused virtual worlds. It notes;

“Based on the facts presented, the Division will not recommend enforcement action to the Commission if, in reliance on your opinion as counsel that VCOIN is not a security, IMVU offers and sells VCOIN, which is transferable both on and off of IMVU’s platform, without registration under Section 5 of the Securities Act and does not register VCOIN as a class of equity securities under Section 12(g) of the Exchange Act. Capitalized terms have the same meanings as defined in your letter.”

In a letter to the SEC dated November 17, IMVU representatives from Perkins Coie wrote that the firm “believes that utilizing blockchain technology, and the Ethereum blockchain specifically, as the foundation for the Upgrade, will address the limitations of the Credit system and create new opportunities for Platform growth.”

Specifically, it said that the social media company’s token — dubbed VCOIN — “will enable Users to purchase or earn and use a digital asset that—unlike Credits—has real value and can be transacted both on and off the Platform.”

The SEC first issued a no-action letter in the Ethereum context in 2019, when it gave the green light to a proposed sale by gaming startup 

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

President Trump has nominated former Coinbase counsel Brian Brooks to a full five-year term as Comptroller of the Currency, but will he be confirmed in time?

Cryptocurrency options traders are moving into the proverbial shadows thanks to startup trade messaging platform Paradigm. 

Launched in 2019, Paradigm has offered a platform for traders to trade in large size bilaterally and then settle those trades onto crypto options venues like CME Group and Deribit.

The firm’s most recent platform update, dubbed Multi-dealer RFQ and Anonymous Trading, allows those participants to now trade with several counter-parties at once — and anonymously, to boot.

“The upgrade will reduce time spent to make a multi-dealer trade from minutes to seconds and make liquidity for large and multi-leg orders instant and ‘on-demand,'” said CEO Anand Gomes. 

The ability to price a trade across several counter-parties at once significantly improves pricing and lowers cost, while also allowing traders to engage in the same complex multi-leg order types that they would have access to in traditional options markets. The addition of the new feature has helped boost volumes going through Paradigm — the firm sees about $40 million in daily average trading volumes.

Paradigm’s reported growth has occurred alongside the break-neck growth in bitcoin options. Open interest across the entire bitcoin options market on November 16 hit an all-time high of $3.8 billion, according to data collected by The Block.

Since the launch of the new feature last week, more than three-quarters of the firm’s more than 300 trading firm clients have opted to trade anonymously with one another. The ability to trade anonymously through Paradigm allows a hedge fund or trading firm to put on a position without showing its hand and impacting the broader market and order books of underlying exchanges. 

That could help bring more entrants into crypto options, says Gomes. 

“It’s already increased flow from our existing guys,” he said. “And several clients who previously weren’t trading on Paradigm because of the lack of anonymity have started to trade enthusiastically. The numbers speak for themselves.”

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Adding a token hard-cap and introducing “halvenings” will make HNT tokenomics easier to understand, say project contributors.

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Traditional financial services fail to meet the core needs of a global economy. DeFi is not perfect but it’s for everyone.

The one-month implied volatility, which is influenced by the demand for call and put options, jumped from roughly 55% to a four-month high of 70.5% in the past two days, suggesting increased expectations for price turbulence over the next four weeks.

The SEC has granted permission to digital avatar firm IMVU to sell its Ethereum-based VCOIN digital currency, though with some restrictions.