Bills, allowing the states to create Bitcoin reserves have been advanced by the New Hampshire’s House and Florida’s House Insurance and Banking Committee for their states respectively.
On April 10, the New Hampshire’s House passed its Bitcoin reserve bill, HB302, in a 192-179 vote. This will now head to the Senate. The state is now the fourth to pass a Bitcoin BTC$81,492 reserve bill through one chamber, joining Arizona, Texas and Oklahoma.
The treasurer of the state will now be able to invest 10% of the state's general fund and other approved funds in precious metals and specific digital assets if HB302 passes the New Hampshire Senate and is signed into law by Governor Kelly Ayotte. The bill also outlines the proper way to care for them.
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The bill specifies that only cryptocurrencies with a market capitalization of over $500 billion would be eligible for investment, a criteria that only Bitcoin currently meets.
Illinois Senate passes crypto bill to fight fraud and rug pulls
A regulatory bill has been passed by the Illinois Senate with a vote of 39 to 17. The bill is aimed at stopping cryptocurrency fraud and protecting investors from deceptive practices, including rug pulls and misleading fee structures.
This bill which is known as the the Digital Assets and Consumer Protection Act, was passed on April 10 by the chamber, which Senator Mark Walker introduced in February.
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This bill gives the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation authority power to oversee digital asset business activity within the state.
According to Cointelegraph, as per the legislation, any entity that engages in digital asset business with Illinois residents must be registered with the state’s financial regulator. The bill also requires crypto service providers to offer advance full disclosure of user fees and charges.
The bi states, “A person shall not engage in digital asset business activity, or hold itself out as being able to engage in digital asset business activity, with or on behalf of a resident unless the person is registered in this State by the Department under this Article.”
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OpenSea urges SEC to exclude NFT marketplaces from regulator’s remit
OpenSea, a non-fungible token marketplace has urged the US Securities and Exchange Commission to exclude NFT marketplaces from regulation under federal securities laws.
According to Cointelegraph, in a letter to the Commissioner, Hester Peirce, who leads the agency’s Crypto Task Force, the general counsel Adele Faure and deputy general counsel Laura Brookover of OpenSea stated that the SEC must "expressly state that NFT marketplaces like OpenSea do not qualify as exchanges under federal securities laws."
Faure and Brookover also argued that NFT marketplaces don’t meet the legal definition of an exchange under US securities laws as they don’t execute transactions, act as intermediaries or bring together multiple sellers for the same asset.
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Faure and Brookover wrote, "The Commission’s past enforcement agenda has created uncertainty. We therefore urge the Commission to remove this uncertainty and protect the ability of US technology companies to lead in this space.”
