The Breakdown First Five - Thursday October 19, 2023

Welcome back to The Breakdown First Five — the 5 most interesting and/or important stories in bitcoin, crypto, and markets to start your day.

5. Speaker McHenry?

After two votes and zero elected speakers, influential Republican figures are calling for Jim Jordan’s candidacy to be abandoned. Instead, the suggestion is to elevate the status of temporary speaker Patrick McHenry to allow Congress to continue its business. With no conventional resolution in sight, pro-crypto McHenry may take over as house speaker with a mandate to get Congress back to business.

4. Gensler Says Nothing

SEC Chair Gary Gensler has given another interview littered with no comment answers. He refused to comment on the Grayscale case, which will receive further instructions from the court on Friday. He also refused to confirm that multiple Bitcoin ETFs would be launched together. What he did say was that SEC staff are working hard on 8-10 applications and detailed the process currently being undertaken. That was enough for some to say ETFs are coming soon.

3. New Hamas Sanctions

The US Treasury’s OFAC has added ten new entities and individuals to its sanctions list in relation to Hamas. Included is a Gaza based crypto exchange, which seems to have already been seized by Israeli authorities in 2021. OFAC claimed that Hamas often relies on small dollar donations and often uses crypto networks, although the group publicly stopped accepting Bitcoin in April.

2. Chainalysis Questions Data

Chainalysis has asked whether recent reporting on terrorist financing in crypto is accurate. In a blog post, the firm claimed that recent data reflects total flows for entities that service terrorist groups, rather than just the flows related to those groups. They say this could mean that the size of the problem is less than 1% of the figure claimed in recent shocking headlines.

1. From the Desk of Warren

Serial letter writer Elizabeth Warren has gathered 100 colleagues to support her in calls to crack down on terrorist financing in Crypto. The letter asks for an update on what the administration is doing to shut down illicit crypto flows and internal data on how big the problem truly is. Notably, Senate Banking Chairman Sherrod Brown supported the letter. Will he also support Warren’s anti-money laundering legislation which could drive DeFi offshore.

Thanks for reading -NLW