The New York Attorney General Letitia James has introduced a bill which is expected to strengthen the authority of the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) to better regulate digital assets, such as cryptocurrencies. According to the proposal, exchanges must reimburse customers in case of fraud incidents. This proposal will allow James to have more enforcement power.

There have already been some action taken in the past few months by the Attorney General James involving crypto companies like Celsius, KuCoin and Nexo. In her lawsuits, James claims a variety of crypto tokens are categorized as commodities or securities. In March, James sued KuCoin for claiming some tokens, including Ether (ETH), are categorized as securities which should have been registered with the NYDFS. Furthermore, a case of similar kind was made against CoinEx wherein LUNA token connected with the terraUSD was accounted as a stablecoin.

The bill will be agreed upon by the state lawmakers in order to be passed as a law. However, this week, Alex Mashinsky, founder of Celsius, rejected the claims of James, claiming she had cherry-picked statements made to investors.

The new proposal implies a great advancement in crypto regulation as it will enforce improved protection of customers in the crypto market while ensuring they are not misled. Besides, the new bill will add an extra layer of trust and reliability to the industry which may prove to be very beneficial in the longer term. Hence, with this new bill in place, New York’s Attorney General James is likely to continue with her groundbreaking efforts to make digital assets safely accessible to the public.



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