USA Law and Practice Contributed by: Gregory Strong, Sarah W. Chen, Brian Farber and Amil Sumaiya Malik, Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP
North Korean cybercrime organisation. In August 2025, a jury returned a mixed verdict, convicting one defendant of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, while deadlocking on the money laundering and sanctions counts, resulting in a partial mistrial on those charges. Roman Storm now faces a potential retrial on the unresolved counts, with prosecutors seeking to proceed in October 2026. In May 2024, the DOJ charged Anton and James Peraire-Bueno, brothers and MIT graduates, for alleg- edly orchestrating an illegal scheme that exploited Ethereum’s transaction validation process to obtain approximately USD25 million in cryptocurrency within a span of 12 seconds. The DOJ’s indictment accuses the brothers of manipulating MEV-Boost, a software used by Ethereum validators, to gain unauthorised access to pending private transactions – a practice known as Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) exploita- tion. This case is one of the first to target the integrity of blockchain validation mechanisms. The defendants challenged the charges, arguing that the actions were within the bounds of Ethereum’s open and permission- less protocol, and that the DOJ’s application of wire fraud statutes to this case represents an overreach. The case went to trial and a mistrial was declared as the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict. Pros- ecutors intend to retry the case.
With respect to activities involving derivatives on digi- tal assets that are treated as commodities, there may be obligations to register as a futures commission merchant, designated contract market, commodity trading adviser, commodity pool operator, or swap dealer. Entities that engage in money transmission activities involving digital assets – generally defined as the acceptance of funds or value that substitutes for currency from one person and the transmission of those funds or value to another location or person by any means – may be required to obtain money trans - mission licences in the states in which they engage in those activities, as well as register as a money ser- vices business with FinCEN. Lastly, state licensing regimes, such as New York’s BitLicense, may apply. 3.2 Set-Up Requirements See 3.1 Licensing Requirements . 3.3 Change of Control Digital asset firms that are licensed money transmit- ters and undergo a change of control will be required to engage with state money transmission regulators to provide notice of a change of control and obtain approval of the change of control. Digital asset firms operating as broker-dealers, invest- ment advisers, or OCC-chartered institutions are sub- ject to analogous requirements under FINRA rules, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, and the Change in Bank Control Act, respectively, each of which may require prior notice to or approval from the applicable regulator. 3.4 Passporting There is no “passporting” regime in the USA. Authori- sation in one state generally does not permit opera- tion in others, and separate state-level licences are typically required. At the federal level, certain OCC charters (eg, national trust bank charters) may pre- empt some state licensing requirements, but do not extend extraterritorially.
2.6 Non-Compliance See 2.5 Market Abuse .
3. Licensing and Set-Up Requirements 3.1 Licensing Requirements There are no licensing regimes at the federal level in the USA that are specific to digital assets or activities in digital assets. However, there are several licensing or registration regimes that may apply, depending on the activities being undertaken. In the securities con- text, to the extent that digital assets or transactions in digital assets are deemed to be securities transac- tions, there are registration obligations with respect to intermediaries involved in those transactions, such as brokers, dealers, exchanges, investment advisers, investment companies, security-based swap dealers and clearing agencies.
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