The US Securities and Exchange Commission has postponed ruling on whether or not to permit Cboe BZX Exchange to list options tied to asset manager Fidelity’s Ether (ETH) exchange-traded fund (ETFs). 

The agency has given itself until May 14 to approve or disapprove of Cboe BZX’s request to list options tied to Fidelity Ethereum Fund (FETH), according to a March 12 SEC filing. 

Cboe BZX initially requested to list options on Fidelity’s Ether ETFs in January, the filing said. 

Listing options on Ether funds is an important step in attracting institutional capital to the cryptocurrency.

Related: SEC acknowledges slew of crypto ETF filings as reviews, approvals accelerate

Flurry of filings

In February, the SEC acknowledged more than a dozen exchange filings related to cryptocurrency ETFs, according to records.

The SEC’s acknowledgments highlight how the agency has softened its stance on crypto since US President Donald Trump started his second term on Jan. 20.

On March 11, Cboe BZX asked regulators for permission to incorporate staking into Fidelity’s Ether ETF. Staking is not yet permitted by any publicly traded US Ether fund. 

Staking Ether enhances returns and involves posting ETH as collateral with a validator in exchange for rewards.

Fidelity’s FETH is among the more popular Ether ETFs, with around $780 million in net assets as of March 12, according to data from VettaFi. 

In February, the SEC delayed deciding on similar rule changes proposed by Nasdaq ISE and Cboe’s affiliate, Cboe Exchange — both US-based securities exchanges. 

The agency intends to decide by April if Nasdaq can list options tied to BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA). 

BlackRock’s fund is the largest ETH ETF, with more than $3.7 billion in net assets, VettaFi’s data shows.

It will rule on Cboe Exchange’s bid to list options on Fidelity’s Ether fund in May. 

Spot Ether ETFs were listed in July 2024 and have proceeded to attract nearly $7 billion in net assets, according to VettaFi’s data. 

Options are contracts granting the right to buy or sell — “call” or “put,” in trader parlance — an underlying asset at a certain price.

Magazine: MegaETH launch could save Ethereum… but at what cost?

The US Securities and Exchange Commission may be preparing to end its enforcement action against Ripple Labs after more than four years.

According to a March 12 X post from Fox Business reporter Eleanor Terrett, the SEC’s case against Ripple was “in the process of wrapping up” after the parties filed an appeal and cross-appeal, respectively, over a $125-million court judgment in August 2024. The civil case against the blockchain firm filed in December 2020 alleged Ripple and certain executives used XRP (XRP) as an unregistered security to raise funds.

Ripple chief legal officer Stuart Alderoty told Cointelegraph on March 11 that the SEC civil case was “far more advanced” than many of the others the regulator had dropped following the inauguration of US President Donald Trump and the departure of Chair Gary Gensler. Since January, the SEC has announced it will not pursue enforcement cases against Coinbase, Consensys, Kraken and others.

“We do have a judgment, we are on appeal — that presents some additional complexity,” said Alderoty in regard to the case potentially being dropped. “But we remain optimistic that we’ll get to a resolution with the SEC, and if we don’t, we’ll proceed with the appeal.” 

According to the Ripple CLO, there were several possible outcomes to ending the SEC case if both parties were in agreement that it should wind down. If Ripple and the SEC agreed independently to drop their appeal and cross-appeal in the Second Circuit, then the $125-million judgment in the lower court would stand. If there were a dispute over the monetary judgment, then the blockchain firm and the commission would have to go “hand-in-hand” to request any modification from a judge. 

Related: Why is the Ripple SEC case still ongoing amid a sea of resolutions?

The SEC v. Ripple case involved one of the first significant court rulings favoring the crypto industry when Judge Analisa Torres said the XRP token was not a security under the regulator’s purview — but only in regard to programmatic sales on exchanges. At the time of publication, no filing suggesting the SEC intended to drop the case appeared on the docket for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York or the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. 

Change of tone at SEC under Trump

Though the SEC filed the Ripple case under Trump’s former chair, Jay Clayton, the commission stepped up the number of enforcement actions following Gensler’s confirmation in 2021.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in an interview aired in December 2024 that the firm may not have gotten as involved in US politics if the commission had been led by someone other than Gensler. Under Garlinghouse, Ripple contributed $45 million to the political action committee Fairshake for the previous election cycle and donated another $25 million in November 2024. 

Ripple pledged $5 million in XRP to Trump’s inauguration fund following his election victory, and both Garlinghouse and Alderoty attended Washington, DC events on Jan. 20 as official guests. The chief legal officer personally donated more than $300,000 to fundraising and political action committees supporting the US president.

The correlation between political contributions to Trump and Republicans and the SEC dropping enforcement actions has many critics pointing to potential conflicts of interest in the administration. Coinbase, another major Fairshake backer that donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, had its SEC civil case halted in February. Its CEO, Brian Armstrong, also attended a March 7 crypto summit at the White House, along with Garlinghouse and others. 

Alderoty suggested that the SEC dropping cases was “independent” of any political donations and more reflective of Acting Chair Mark Uyeda’s perspective on the industry and related regulations.

At the time of publication, the US Senate has not scheduled a hearing to consider the nomination of the potential next head of the commission, Paul Atkins. Commissioner Hester Peirce said in February that the SEC would be more likely to wait on setting a crypto regulatory agenda after a new chair took office.

Magazine: SEC’s U-turn on crypto leaves key questions unanswered

Officials with India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) announced the arrest of Lithuanian national Aleksej Bešciokov, who was alleged to have operated the cryptocurrency exchange Garantex. 

In a March 12 notice, the CBI said police in the Indian state of Kerala had coordinated with national authorities to arrest Bešciokov. The Lithuanian national was reportedly vacationing in India with his family and planning to leave the country. The arrest of the alleged Garantex founder was based on US charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business and conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

According to an indictment filed on Feb. 27 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Bešciokov, Aleksandr Mira Serda and others operated Garantex to “launder the proceeds of criminal activity, including ransomware, computer hacking, narcotics transactions, and sanctions violations, and profited from the laundering” between 2019 to the present. Bešciokov is expected to be transferred to US custody in accordance with India’s Extradition Act of 1962.

The alleged Garantex founder’s arrest followed Tether’s freezing of $27 million worth of USDt (USDT) on the platform. The crypto exchange announced on March 6 that it had temporarily suspended all services, including withdrawals. US authorities also seized three website domain names “used to support Garantex’s operations” as part of a judge’s order in the criminal case.

Related: US sanctions crypto addresses linked to Nemesis darknet marketplace

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control added Garantex to its list of sanctioned entities in April 2022 for “willfully disregard[ing] Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) obligations and allow[ing] their systems to be abused by illicit actors.” The European Union also imposed sanctions against the platform in February as part of sanctions on “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.”

Serda, a Russian national and Garantex’s co-founder and chief commercial officer, was seemingly still at large at the time of Bešciokov’s arrest. 

A Garantex spokesperson declined to comment.

Delays returning to the United States?

It’s unclear what legal recourse Bešciokov could have in fighting US extradition from India should he choose to do so. Lawyers for Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon, who was arrested in Montenegro in March 2023 on unrelated charges, repeatedly appealed court decisions regarding US extradition before he was finally handed over to officials in December 2024. 

Former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who was in the Bahamas when crypto exchange FTX collapsed in November 2022, was extradited from the island nation to the US to face charges. He was later convicted of seven felony counts and sentenced to 25 years in prison but filed an appeal. 

Magazine: Meet lawyer Max Burwick — ‘The ambulance chaser of crypto’