york – FinTech and Blockchain Law Watch

NYAG Report on Virtual Markets

Sep 21 2018

On September 18, 2018, the NY Attorney General’s office (“OAG”) published its Virtual Markets Integrity Initiative report (the “Report”) (found here). The Report includes findings from the OAG’s April 2018 fact-finding inquiry (the “Initiative”) into the policies and practices of various virtual asset trading platforms. The Report is anything but positive.

The Report expresses a number of concerns with the following key findings:

many exchanges conduct business lines and operational roles creating potential conflicts of interest;
trading platforms have yet to implement serious efforts to impede abusive trading activity; and
protections for customer funds are often limited or illusory.

The Report identifies by name certain platforms that declined to participate in the April 2018 survey on the claim that they do not allow trading from New York. The Report acknowledges that the OAG has referred three of these platforms (Binance, Gate.io and Kraken) to the Department of Financial Services for potential violation of NY’s virtual currency regulations.

Surprise: New York State Court Ruling Means That NY Payroll Card Regulations Could Go into Effect After All

Jul 23 2018

By Judith Rinearson and Eric A. Love

The years-long endeavor in New York State to extensively regulate payroll cards (referred to in the NY regulations as “payroll debit cards”) recently entered a new phase when the New York State Supreme Court, Albany County, annulled the New York State Industrial Board of Appeals’ (“IBA”) February 2017 decision to revoke new payroll card regulations that had previously been issued in that state. This means that, depending on the outcome of the recently filed appeal of the court’s decision, the controversial and highly restrictive NY payroll card regulations could become effective after all.

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