Today in Crypto: UK Think Tank Calls for Global Rules on CBDC; Celsius Hires New Restructuring Lawyers

As part of its ongoing investigation, India’s Directorate of Enforcement (ED) is looking into more details regarding foreign exchange violations from crypto firms, according to a July 6 report from the Economic Times.

Among those summoned were executives from CoinDCX, CoinSwitch and more. The ED is working under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, which restricts payments made to entities outside India.

In other news, CoinDesk reported Friday (July 8) that Blockchain.com could potentially lose $270 million over lending to troubled venture capital firm Three Arrows Capital.

Blockchain.com CEO Peter Smith said Three Arrows is “rapidly becoming insolvent,” with the report noting that the latter firm has seen a liquidation order in the British Virgin Islands. Smith said Blockchain.com won’t face similar troubles, though, and customers “will not be impacted.”

Furthermore, the International Regulatory Strategy Group, a think tank backed by the City of London Corporation, recently said global rules will let central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) operate well in cross-border uses.

However, Britain has said any digital version of sterling might not be available for a while, at least until the second half of the decade, per a Friday Reuters report. Many other countries have been exploring them, including the U.S., and the Federal Reserve said a digital dollar could help out with the value of the dollar.

In other news, Russian financial monitoring agency Rosfinmonitoring has said it’s using software to track crypto transactions, hoping to improve those capabilities, Reuters wrote Friday.

This is going on as Moscow is looking to add new crypto regulations. The report noted that the Bank of Russia is skeptical of crypto and wants to ban all trading and mining, although the Russian government reportedly wants to regulate the industry instead.

In addition, bitcoin’s price has seen a bit of an uptick, with investors speculating that this could be a sign of the liquidity crisis ending, CNBC reported Friday.

Bitcoin had risen 13.63% for the seven-day trading week ending on Friday and might be having its best week since last October, Coin Metrics said.

In more crypto news, Reuters reported Thursday (July 7) that Brazilian federal police have carried out an operation against a criminal gang it said was laundering money from illegal gold mining with crypto tokes.

The police arrested five people and served 60 search and seizure warrants in that case.

Meanwhile, BlockFi investors are looking at the possibility that some of their holdings could be wiped out, Bloomberg wrote Saturday (July 9).

BlockFi has been limping along and managed to get a capital injection from crypto exchange FTX, but the Private Shares Fund marked down BlockFi’s warrants as worthless for its June report. FTX offered a $400 million revolving credit facility as a lifeline.

Additionally, Bloomberg also reported Saturday that CoinFlex has taken legal action to recover $84 million in losses from just one customer.

The company might also be signing a joint venture with another crypto exchange later on to remedy things. The exchange said a counterparty, which it later said was longtime investor Roger Ver, didn’t pay back $47 million from a margin call. The total owed later rose after things were calculated, the report said.

Finally, Celsius Network, the crypto network which froze withdrawals amid plunging crypto prices, is hiring new lawyers for restructuring advice, including a potential bankruptcy option, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday (July 10).

The lawyers are from Kirkland & Ellis, and have replaced the former counsel for the company.

Because of the freezing of accounts, customers haven’t been able to access their accounts in weeks. Celsius reported $11.8 billion in assets in May — and the company has been reshuffling its board as of the last week.

For all PYMNTS crypto coverage, subscribe to the daily Crypto Newsletter.