This Month In Crypto: SCOTUS, Facebook, South Korea, and more

Supreme Court acknowledges Bitcoin for the first time In a dissenting opinion to WISCONSIN CENTRAL LTD. ET AL. v. UNITED STATES, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer wrote: “Perhaps one day employees will be paid in Bitcoin or some other type of cryptocurrency. . .Nothing in the statute suggests the meaning of this provision should be trapped in a monetary time warp, forever limited to those forms of money commonly used in the 1930’s.”

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis adds historical crypto data Drawing data from the Coinbase Index, FRED added four series on the prices of different cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin. “The price data are updated daily and span from as early as 2014 to the present.”

SEC Corporate Finance Director says Ether is not a security In public comments at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit, William Hinman, the director of the SEC’s division of corporate finance, said that, “putting aside the fundraising that accompanied the creation of Ether, based on my understanding of the present state of Ether, the Ethereum network and its decentralized structure, current offers and sales of Ether are not securities transactions.”

Stanford launches a blockchain research center in collaboration with Ethereum Foundation Run by Dan Boneh and David Mazieres, the Stanford Center for Blockchain Research (CBR) aims to “support the thriving ecosystem by developing new technologies needed to advance the field.”

Federal employees are now mandated to identify crypto holdings House Ethics Committee says employees who work in the executive branch who own crypto must now disclose it. (The disclosure rules are for those whose holdings exceeded $1,000 at the end of the reporting period, or if income produced during that time exceeded $200.)

Facebook lifts ban on crypto advertising Reversing a previous ban on all crypto, Facebook updated its policy to allow ads for crypto and related content. Advertisers will need to be pre-approved and the company will continue to prohibit ads that “promote binary options and initial coin offerings.”

South Korean government takes steps to federally regulate crypto exchanges In a move that signals increasing support for the blockchain ecosystem, the Korean Financial Intelligence Unit announced that it will be supplying the same level of oversight and customer verification procedures to crypto exchanges (enhanced Know Your Customer and Anti Money Laundering protections), as it currently has for other financial institutions. See this Cointelegraph story for deeper context on South Korea’s stance on crypto.