Learn more about the 2025 Coin Center Annual Dinner

Cryptocurrencies: Challenges, Disruption and Opportunities

Director of research Peter Van Valkenburgh gave a guest lecture at the University of Texas Center for Politics and Governance. 

Overzealous AML enforcement doesn’t just harm innovation, it can also be deadly.

That’s what the conclusion of new research reported in the Washington Post today showing that the same kind of bank “derisking” that affects the deposits, wire transfers, and access to...

Amazon, Apple, Google, Intuit, and Paypal just asked Congress for a unified federal alternative to state money transmission licensing.

In a letter to congress, their industry group, Financial Innovation Now, explained how state-by-state money transmission licensing is a major impediment to innovation in financial services here in the US: Payment...

Comments to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Exploring Special Purpose National Bank Charters for Fintech Companies

We reiterate and underscore the need for a Special Purpose National Bank charter that is suitable for digital payments companies.

A direct download of this letter is available here. 

Comments to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Exploring Special Purpose National Bank Charters for Fintech Companies

A coherent national approach to regulating fintech companies will boost American competitiveness, foster technological innovation, and improve financial inclusion.

A direct download of these comments is available here. 

California is back at it; a new (old) virtual currency licensing bill is pending in the Assembly.

We believe that the ULC’s model Regulation of Virtual Currency Businesses Act will offer a better way.

The new bill is AB 1123. Over the last two years we’ve been discussing and studying an earlier bill, AB 1326, extensively. That bill went through several iterations: one that...

Bitcoin taxation is broken. Here’s how to fix it.

An exemption for small gains would take most of the headache out of using digital currencies like Bitcoin. 

We recently described what a bill creating a federal safe harbor for non-custodial uses of cryptocurrency should look like, and we’re now advocating for just such a bill in Congress....

Congress should create a blockchain technology safe harbor. Luckily they already figured it out in the ’90s.

The Communications Decency Act, which protected the internet's early innovators, is a perfect model for protecting the people and companies building it's next level infrastructure. 

As we wrote last January, We got lucky with the Internet. The net we’ve come to know, love, and rely upon owes much of its existence to two laws passed...

Here’s how the tax treatment of Bitcoin is broken.

I couldn’t have put it more succinctly than this piece in the Wall Street Journal today: One complication is that the IRS treats bitcoin as property, rather than currency. The...

FTC Fintech Forum: Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain

Director of research Peter Van Valkenburgh clarified the different types of blockchain consensus mechanisms and discussed the consumer protection implications for these technologies. A full agenda and list of participants...