Aurelia Butler

(Reuters) – Cryptocurrency assets are highly speculative and investors in them need more protections or they could lose trust in the markets, Gary Gensler, chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said on Monday. Generally, people who buy cryptocurrencies do not get the disclosures they get when they make other asset purchases around things like whether the trading platform they are using is actually trading against them, or whether they actually own the assets they store in digital wallets, Gensler said.”We have this basic bargain: You the investing public can make your choices about the risk you take, but there is supposed to be full and fair disclosure, and people are not supposed to lie to you,” he said at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s annual conference in Washington.His comments came after last week’s spectacular collapse of TerraUSD, a so-called stablecoin that lost its 1-to-1 dollar peg.The token’s crash sent cryptocurrencies tumbling, a slide that resumed on Monday, as bitcoin erased the gains it had eked out over the weekend to trade under $30,000, far below its Nov. 10 record of $69,000.While crypto markets are thought of as decentralized, the reality is that most activity occurs on a handful of trading platforms, which, along with token issuers, need to work with the SEC to improve industry rules and disclosures, Gensler said.He pointed to basic market principles like, “anti-fraud, anti-manipulation, making sure there’s not front-running, making sure an order book is actually real and not made up.”The SEC will continue to be “a cop on the beat,” while working with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to ensure all cryptocurrencies are covered, Gensler said.”There’s a lot to be done here, and in the meantime the investing public is not that well protected,” he said. More

KABUL (Reuters) – Taliban authorities in Afghanistan dissolved five key departments of the former U.S.-backed government, including the country’s Human Rights Commission, deeming them unnecessary in the face of a financial crunch, an official said on Monday.Afghanistan faces a budget deficit of 44 billion Afghanis ($501 million) this financial year, Taliban authorities said on Saturday as they announced their first annual national budget since taking over the war-torn country last August.”Because these departments were not deemed necessary and were not included in the budget, they have been dissolved,” Innamullah Samangani, the Taliban government’s deputy spokesman, told Reuters. Also dissolved was the High Council for National Reconciliation (HCNR), the once high-powered National Security Council, and the commission for overseeing the implementation of the Afghan constitution. The HCNR was last headed by former Afghan President Abdullah Abdullah, and was working to negotiate a peace between the U.S.-backed government of former President Ashraf Ghani and the then-insurgent Taliban.In August 2021, 20 years after invading Afghanistan, foreign forces withdrew from the country leading to the collapse of the government and a Taliban takeover.Samangani said the national budget was “based on objective facts” and intended only for departments that had been active and productive.He added that the bodies could be reactivated in the future “if needed”.The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 with an iron fist and implemented a harsh version of Islamic rule, including banning women from education and work. After taking over last year, the Taliban assured the world they would be more moderate. However, they are yet to allow older girls to restart education, and have also introduced rules that mandate that women and girls wear veils and requiring them to have male relatives accompany them in public places. More

Boris Johnson was locked in a stand-off with Northern Ireland’s biggest pro-UK unionist party on Monday, as a row over post-Brexit trading rules left the region in political paralysis.The Democratic Unionist party warned Johnson that only the enacting of legislation to scrap a post-Brexit customs border in the Irish Sea — not just the threat of a new law — would be enough to end the political deadlock.Liz Truss, the UK foreign secretary, will on Tuesday set out plans for British legislation to override parts of the Northern Ireland protocol, a key element of Johnson’s 2019 Brexit deal, if talks with the EU on reforming the pact fail.But while that plan has enraged politicians in the EU — who argue that Johnson’s government is threatening to unilaterally rip up an international treaty — it is still not deemed hardline enough by the DUP.Speaking after talks with Johnson in Northern Ireland on Monday, DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said he wanted the legislation enacted if he is to lead his party back into the power-sharing executive in the region.“Tabling legislation is words,” Donaldson told reporters outside Hillsborough Castle, the official UK government residence outside Belfast. “What I need is decisive action and that means I want to see the government enacting legislation that will bring the solution that we need.”Johnson, who was booed by anti-Brexit protesters on his arrival, has been desperate in recent days to dial down tensions with Brussels, amid fears the EU could retaliate with a trade war. His allies said he had “zero appetite” for a political fight with the EU.

Speaking after talks with the five main parties in the region, he said that all had agreed that the Northern Ireland protocol — which creates checks on trade travelling across the Irish Sea from Great Britain to the region — could be improved.“We don’t want to scrap it, but we think it can be fixed,” Johnson said. He added that he wanted a deal with the EU to soften border checks: “We would like this done in a consensual way with our friends and partners.”The British legislation, to be outlined by Truss on Tuesday after being signed off by the cabinet, would be part of a “parallel process”, according to Johnson aides, and would only be passed into law if EU talks collapsed.Another piece of Northern Ireland-related business due to be introduced in the London parliament on Tuesday is a bill to offer an amnesty from prosecution to some perpetrators of attacks during the Troubles after the government rowed back from controversial plans to introduce blanket immunity.But the DUP’s hardline stance on the protocol suggests, according to one senior Tory MP, that Johnson is risking a fight with Brussels but is getting nothing in return. “It’s a strategic disaster — why are they going to compromise?” the MP said.

Truss and Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, had been convinced that the DUP would re-enter the executive if legislation was brought forward, according to government officials. Under the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement, Northern Ireland’s main unionist and nationalist parties have been forced into fractious power-sharing. The protocol row has stymied its resumption in the wake of the May 5 election, won by the nationalist party Sinn Féin.The DUP on Friday scuppered the election of a speaker to the Stormont assembly and has vetoed the formation of a power-sharing government until Brexit demands it says would restore Northern Ireland’s place as part of the UK are met. Johnson’s allies said the EU needed to be more flexible because it would be a “kick in the teeth” to deny nationalist party Sinn Féin its election victory. Northern Ireland now faces the prospect of months of limbo and potentially even new elections this winter, while the region confronts a cost of living crisis and serious problems in its health service.Sinn Féin emerged furious from what party president Mary Lou McDonald called “tough” talks with Johnson, whom she accused of acting “shamefully”.She demanded a return to local institutions with “no ifs, no buts, no conditionality, no unionist veto” and slammed the prospect of unilateral UK legislation to undo parts of the protocol. Additional reporting by Sam Fleming in Brussels

Video: Northern Ireland tries to heal a legacy of separation | FT Film More