Risk off; crypto, glum

All investments and trading are risky and may result in the loss of capital. Cryptoassets are largely unregulated and are therefore not subject to protection.

Prospects for the ubiquity of digital payments just went to a whole new level with news that Fireblocks is partnering with Checkout.com, a FinTech darling betting big on crypto. 

Fireblocks, a crypto custodian, in February announced its acquisition of First Digital, a stablecoin and digital asset payments technology platform. Using this combo's tech stack, Checkout.com will offer merchants 24/7 fiat-to-stablecoin conversion for customer payments (Cointelegraph).

In a beta program, Checkout.com settled $300 million worth of stable-to-fiat conversions for merchants who let their customers pay with Circle's USD Coin (USDC).

Checkout.com's rival, Stripe, is also pushing into bridging, via USDC, the gap between fiat and crypto.

The launch of a new stablecoin settlement system potentially widens the use of stablecoins within e-commerce, Cointelegraph said.

Initially, Checkout.com’s system will only support USDC, although there are plans to offer a wider range of assets over time, CoinDesk said.

At the time it acquired First Digital, Fireblocks declared it was bent on expanding, by spring 2022, support for B2C/B2B forms of payment via USDC, as well as Celo, a layer-1 payments-centric protocol that Fireblocks supports.

Bitcoin gave back its gains of a day ago, as did Ethereum. BTC fell 6% in 24 hours as of early Tuesday morning. It's roughly $29,500.

ETH declined 8% to about $1,750 during the period. Reduced DeFi activity on Ethereum is likely behind the bearishness, Decrypt said.

The Dow dropping more than 250 points at the open didn't help.

Meanwhile, Binance's BNB (BNB) lost 10% amid reports that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has started a probe into whether the sale – five years ago – of BNB tokens ran afoul of securities laws by not being registered with the SEC.

A newly drafted piece of legislation, the Responsible Financial Innovation Act, made its debut on Capitol Hill earlier today. The bill would treat most digital assets as commodities while shifting regulatory authority to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and away from the SEC. It was co-sponsored by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Sen. Cynthia Loomis (R-WY), a BTC holder and a vocal proponent of the crypto industry.

While the bill is unlikely to pass in the current Congress, it is expected to gain new momentum in 2023 following the November mid-term elections, framing the contours of future crypto policy, Decrypt said.

As drafted, the proposed legislation would give the CFTC exclusive spot market jurisdiction over all fungible digital assets which are not securities, including "ancillary assets," defined in the bill as those which are not fully decentralized (like Bitcoin) but also do not create rights to profits or other financial interests in a business entity.

This definition would apply to the bulk if not all of the largest 200 assets, Decrypt reported. To enjoy an ancillary asset designation, projects would have to file periodic disclosures related to token supply.

Although oversight of the industry, if the bill ever passes, would fall primarily under the CFTC, the SEC would still be permitted to challenge whether a crypto is a security by way of the federal courts.