The UK House of Commons Treasury Committee has likened retail cryptocurrency trading to sports betting. A bipartisan group of parliamentarians stated in a report that cryptocurrencies “have no intrinsic value” and should be regulated as gambling, not financial, instruments.

The Bitcoin blockchain may soon become more efficient as Lightning Labs has released an updated version of the Taproot Assets Protocol, which is designed to help avoid network congestion by operating “maximally off-chain.”

Federal Judge Analisa Torres ruled that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) cannot keep documents related to a former official's 2018 speech on crypto and securities confidential in its ongoing lawsuit against Ripple, the company associated with the XRP cryptocurrency.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Crypto Should be Regulated Like Gambling, UK Lawmakers Say
• BRC-20 Tokens to Join Lightning Network
• SEC Loses Bid to Keep Crypto Speech Documents Secret in Ripple Case
• Bitcoin’s Downturn Less Severe Than 2018-19, Data Shows

Crypto Should be Regulated Like Gambling, UK Lawmakers Say

The UK House of Commons Treasury Committee has likened retail cryptocurrency trading to sports betting. A bipartisan group of parliamentarians stated in a report that cryptocurrencies “have no intrinsic value” and should be regulated as gambling, not financial instruments.

This perspective follows a February announcement from His Majesty's Treasury, outlining its intent to regulate cryptoasset activities. However, the committee warned about the dangers associated with legitimizing a volatile market, as traditional finance lobbyists have previously cautioned.

The report highlights the Committee's concern that classifying consumer crypto trading as a financial service, as suggested by the government, could mislead consumers into believing they are safe and protected while investing in these assets.

The Committee acknowledged that while the underlying blockchain technology may offer some financial services benefits, the consumer trading of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, due to their lack of intrinsic value, significant price volatility, and lack of clear societal good, more closely aligns with gambling

CryptoUK, a trade association representing the cryptocurrency industry, refuted the report’s characterization of crypto as gambling and labeled the allegations as unfounded and fundamentally flawed.

BRC-20 Tokens to Soon Join Lightning Network

The Bitcoin blockchain may soon become more efficient as Lightning Labs has released an updated version of the Taproot Assets Protocol, which is designed to help avoid network congestion by operating “maximally off-chain.”

In a blog post, Lightning Network infrastructure firm Lightning Labs criticized the current approach to inscribing assets on the Bitcoin blockchain as being overly inefficient, and highlighted protocols that embed asset metadata “directly into block space.”

The Bitcoin network has been plagued by such congestion ever since the introduction of the BRC-20 token standard by an anonymous developer known as "Domo" on March 8. Lightning Labs has now suggested users could soon incorporate BRC-20 assets into the Lightning Network.

Domo previously praised the Taproot Assets Protocol as a superior solution for creating new assets on Bitcoin compared to existing methods like JavaScript Object Notation (JSON).

Currently, most BRC-20 tokens are created using Ordinal inscriptions of JSON data to deploy token contracts and transfer tokens. This method has been widely criticized by developers who claim that it incurs transaction fees that are four times higher than those associated with using binary.

On May 9, the total value of BRC-20 tokens briefly exceeded $1 billion but has since fallen to $500 million, a decline of nearly 50%.

SEC Loses Bid to Keep Crypto Speech Documents Secret in Ripple Case

Federal Judge Analisa Torres ruled that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) cannot keep documents related to a former official's 2018 speech on crypto and securities confidential in its ongoing lawsuit against Ripple, the company associated with the XRP cryptocurrency.

The ruling pertains to documents linked to a speech by William Hinman, the former Director of Corporation Finance for the SEC. In that speech, Hinman expressed his personal opinion that Ether (ETH) was not a security.

In January 2022, Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn of the same court first decreed that these documents needed to be handed over to Ripple for discovery.

Judge Torres, from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, upheld this decision, ruling that these "Hinman Speech Documents" cannot be sealed in court.

While the SEC will be allowed to redact the personal details of individuals referenced in the documents, Judge Torres maintained that these documents are pertinent to the legal process and should be accessible to the public.

Ripple had also sought to redact various documents, including contracts, financial information, and other data. Judge Torres permitted many of these redactions, but noted that some of the proposed redactions, including several tied to XRP, are “overbroad.”.

Bitcoin’s Current Downturn Less Severe Than 2018-19, Data Shows

Comparing Bitcoin's recent performance and its 2018/2019 downturn shows that during the 2018-19 period, Bitcoin's maximum slump reached 83.3% on the 364th day.

In contrast, the 2022-23 period witnessed a slightly milder downturn, as Bitcoin's decline peaked at 76.67% on the 378th day.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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