NEW BUSINESS: Binance.US, the American arm of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, hired its first lobbying firms last month, newly filed disclosures show, as policymakers in Washington face calls to rein in the rapidly growing and mostly unregulated industry. Hogan Lovells’ Ivan Zapien, a Democratic lobbyist who previously was chief of staff to now-Senate Foreign Relations Chair Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), and former House GOP aides Aaron Cutler and Chase Kroll will lobby for the exchange.
A cryptocurrency network consists of a global community of stakeholders, including the validators that secure the network while adding transactions to the blockchain, the traders who speculate on these radically market-driven assets, and the builders working to onboard people to this new financial paradigm.

A blockchain is spread across many computers that manages and records transactions.
Like all cryptocurrencies, the majors are digital assets that secure and verify transactions using computer science and complex mathematics, known as cryptography. Unlike traditional (‘fiat’) currencies, they are not currently issued or backed by a central authority such as a government. Instead, they run across a network of computers and are underpinned by blockchain technology – a permanent record of transactions that cannot be altered without the consensus of the network.