Company: DEFI
Filing Date: 2025-03-17
Form Type: S-1/A
Source: 0001387131-25-000058
Chunk: 67

Company: Tidal Commodities Trust I
Filing Date: 2025-03-17
Form: S-1/A
Chunk 67
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 to employees, and other third-party developers were not securities transactions. More recently, the D.C. Circuit Court found that the SEC’s denial of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust’s listing was “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedures Act in light of the SEC’s approval of two similar bitcoin futures-based ETPs. Nonetheless, until the SEC’s numerous actions against digital asset market participants are resolved, the structure of the digital asset market in the United States will remain subject to substantial regulatory risk, which may impact the demand for digital assets and the continued availability of existing exchanges and offerings.

FinCEN requires any administrator or exchanger of convertible digital assets to register with FinCEN as a money transmitter and comply with the anti-money laundering (“AML”) regulations applicable to money transmitters. Entities which fail to comply with such regulations are subject to fines, may be required to cease operations, and could have potential criminal liability. For example, in 2015, FinCEN assessed a $700,000 fine against a sponsor of a digital asset for violating several requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act by acting as a money services business, or “MSB,” and selling the digital asset without registering with FinCEN, and by failing to implement and maintain an adequate AML program. In 2017, FinCEN assessed a $110 million fine against BTC-e, a now defunct digital asset exchange, for similar violations. The requirement that exchangers that do business in the U.S. register with FinCEN and comply with AML regulations may increase the cost of buying and selling bitcoin and therefore may adversely affect the price of bitcoin and an investment in the Shares.

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The Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury (the “U.S. Treasury Department”) has added digital currency addresses to the list of Specially Designated Nationals whose assets are blocked, and with whom U.S. persons are generally prohibited from dealing. Such actions by OFAC, or by similar organizations in other jurisdictions, may introduce uncertainty in the market as to whether bitcoin that has been associated with such addresses in the past can be easily sold. This “tainted” bitcoin may trade at a substantial discount to untainted bitcoin. Reduced fungibility in the digital asset markets may reduce the liquidity of bitcoin and therefore adversely affect their price.

In February 2020, then-U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin stated that digital assets were a “cruc