In a surprising move, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a formidable force in American corporate advocacy, has taken up arms for digital asset industry players who have been vocally critical of U.S. regulatory approaches.

In an unexpected disruption, the world’s second-largest blockchain, the Ethereum network, experienced a hiccup that left it unable to fully authenticate transactions for approximately 25 minutes. While blocks were proposed, they weren’t finalized.

Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer, Paul Grewal, has issued a public apology for the cryptocurrency exchange’s recent newsletter addressing the popular meme-inspired cryptocurrency Pepe Coin (PEPE) and its background.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• U.S. Chamber of Commerce Sides with Crypto Industry Against SEC
• Ethereum Network Suffers Brief 25-Minute Outage
• Coinbase Apologizes for Calling Pepe Coin a Hate Symbol
• Crypto Market Movers – RNDR, TRX, UMA

U.S. Chamber of Commerce Sides with Crypto Industry Against SEC

In a surprising move, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a formidable force in American corporate advocacy, has taken up arms for digital asset industry players who have been vocally critical of U.S. regulatory approaches.

The Chamber has thrown its considerable weight behind the legal challenge brought against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by Coinbase, which came as Coinbase asks the SEC to clarify its rules for the industry.

In its own court filing, the Chamber argued that the SEC's perceived inaction in response to Coinbase's request is resulting in "substantial economic harm" to both the company and the broader business community.

The Chamber has publicly criticized the SEC's enforcement action against the staking-as-a-service offering operated by Kraken. Kraken reached a settlement with the SEC and subsequently discontinued the service in the U.S. This development has led many to speculate that the SEC's actions may drive crypto firms away from the U.S.

The Chamber also expressed strong disapproval regarding  the regulatory ambiguity surrounding the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Ether (ETH), as the SEC’s position on it seemingly changed with Chair Gary Gensler.

Gensler’s predecessor, Jay Clayton, saw the SEC regard ETH as sufficiently decentralized not to be classified as a financial security. Gensler has hinted it’s no longer using this interpretation but refrained from sharing a new interpretation publicly.

In its submission to the court earlier this week, the Chamber aligned itself with one of the arguments put forth by Coinbase in its own legal challenge, suggesting that the SEC may have already reached a conclusion on whether to issue a regulation but has refrained from formally acknowledging this decision.

Ethereum Network Suffers Brief 25-Minute Outage

In an unexpected disruption, the world’s second-largest blockchain, the Ethereum network, experienced a hiccup that left it unable to fully authenticate transactions for approximately 25 minutes. While blocks were proposed, they weren’t finalized.

Participants using the blockchain noticed that their transactions were seemingly processing as usual, but during the 25-minute stretch of irregularity, these transactions were susceptible to being altered because of the malfunction.

Several Ethereum developers announced the situation on the microblogging platform Twitter and noted they were investigating the issue. Past instances of similar difficulties have been traced back to a bug in a client - the software running the blockchain.

After a short period of uncertainty, the Ethereum network restarted finalizing blocks again. Developers have assured they are continuing their efforts to pinpoint the cause of this temporary outage, promising to update the community on their findings soon.

Coinbase Apologizes for Calling Pepe Coin a Hate Symbol

Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer, Paul Grewal, has issued a public apology for the cryptocurrency exchange’s recent newsletter addressing the popular meme-inspired cryptocurrency Pepe Coin (PEPE) and its background.

Coinbase’s newsletter referred to the meme the cryptocurrency was inspired on as a “hate symbol” that was hijacked by alt-right groups, pointing to a 2016 decision by the Anti-Defamation League to include the frog-themed character in its catalogue of online hate symbols.

The move prompted community backlash that led to a hashtag for “#deletecoinbase” trending. Grewal has now said the firm “screwed up” and is sorry, as it “ did not provide the whole picture of the history of the meme and we apologize to the community."

Crypto Market Movers – RNDR, TRX, UMA

Several tokens are leading the charge in the last 7-day period. Some of these are well-known cryptocurrencies with more liquid trading pairs, so we’ll be focusing on these over low-cap cryptocurrencies that may have higher percentage changes.

UMA (UMA) - UMA is an open-source blockchain protocol that enables the creation, management, and settlement of decentralized financial contracts, also known as synthetic assets or derivatives. UMA allows users to create and customize their own financial contracts, providing a permissionless and decentralized way to create and trade synthetic assets on the blockchain.

Tron (TRX) - Tron is a decentralized blockchain-based platform based on the TRON protocol, which is a blockchain operating system that offers high throughput, high scalability, and high availability for all decentralized applications (DApps) within the TRON ecosystem.

Render token (RNDR) - The Render Network is designed to connect users looking to perform render jobs with people who have idle GPUs to process the renders. Owners would connect their GPUs to the Render Network in order to receive and complete rendering jobs using OctaneRender.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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