A new year, a new crypto-friendly US president, and the imminent departure of Gary Gensler.

And yet crypto will keep feeling the heat on the legal front for some time to come — the industry’s court docket is chock-a-block with pending cases.

Several precedent-setting proceedings in 2025 could define new rules for crypto sectors, as Aleks Gilbert reported.

Lido DAO faces test

A California plaintiff’s lawsuit against Lido DAO, for instance, alleges that the DeFi giant sold unregistered securities in the form of its governance token.

The investor also sued the venture capitalist firms backing the staking firm, including Andreessen Horowitz and Paradigm. Lido and the VCs have denied the allegations.

The case is testing whether VCs who hold loads of governance tokens actually control the decentralised autonomous organisation.

The argument challenges the idea that DAOs are controlled by an array of members, and the judge overseeing the litigation has already found this argument credible when he dismissed the respondents’ effort to get the case tossed.

Meanwhile, the future of crypto privacy is at stake in the looming prosecution of Roman Storm, the Tornado Cash co-founder charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and with violating US sanctions.

Not guilty plea

Storm has pleaded not guilty. His case has become a cause célèbre for privacy advocates who contend the government is not respecting the nature of automated smart contracts at the heart of decentralised finance.

Even though a US appellate court recently agreed with that argument, it didn’t work for Storm’s fellow dev, Alexey Pertsev. In May, a Dutch court convicted Pertsev, and he was sentenced to a five year-prison term.

Another high-profile crypto defendant landed in the US in December to face trial: Do Kwon, the onetime DeFi mogul who was captured in Montenegro in 2023 after going underground for months.

Charged with fraud in connection with the $40 billion collapse of Terraform Labs more than two years ago, Kwon was extradited to the US from Montenegro in December.

Do Kwon pleaded not guilty in federal court in New York last week, Ben Weiss reported.

With Bitcoin surging and Donald Trump poised to usher in a relaxed regulatory climate, Do Kwon’s trial will be a jarring flashback to the dark days of 2022.

This is when Terra’s failure was followed by that of a number of big platforms, including Celsius and FTX.

In December, Celsius co-founder Alex Mashinsky pleaded guilty in the same court that will hear Do Kwon’s case.

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Less than a week into the new year, MicroStrategy has already bought more Bitcoin.

Its Bitcoin-backing chairman, Michael Saylor, announced on Monday that the business intelligence firm bought 1,070 of the cryptocurrency for an average price of $94,000.

And if the company completes a new capital raise, this is just the beginning.

Saylor announced on Friday that it’s targeting a $2 billion capital raise to acquire even more Bitcoin.

The company expects to sell preferred corporate stock should it move ahead with the raise this quarter. The filing caveats that the company may not sell any stock depending on market conditions.

The New Year’s capital raise would be the first step in MicroStrategy’s audacious “21/21″ plan to raise $42 billion over the next three years by selling corporate stock and bonds.

Saylor announced the campaign in October and said the company will sell $21 billion in equity and $21 billion in bonds.

MicroStrategy, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, has amassed more than $44 billion in Bitcoin on its balance sheet since it started investing in the cryptocurrency in 2020, according to Bitcoin Treasuries.

One of its most aggressive Bitcoin buying streaks came over the 2024 holiday period. From mid-November to Christmas day, the business intelligence firm acquired roughly 113,000 Bitcoin, worth roughly $11 billion.

During that period, the company’s stock hit an all-time high of $473 and saw it enter the Nasdaq 100.

Though the share price has plummeted since then, Saylor’s announcement on Friday appears to have inspired a few punters.

MicroStrategy is up 4.3% pre-market New York trading on Monday.

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The National Bank of Cambodia has published a first set of digital asset rules that apply to banks and payment service providers. Banks can have exposure to tokenized assets and qualifying stablecoins, but no first party exposure to cryptocurrencies. Multiple Cambodian news outlets have stated that a ban on cryptocurrencies persists. Our interpretation of the rules is more permissive – that banks can provide cryptocurrency services to clients.

Cambodia’s central bank rules distinguished between banks acting for their own purposes, versus on behalf of a client – as a crypto asset service provider (CASP). In both cases, they require central bank approval. For direct bank exposures, the institutions are restricted to tokenization and stablecoins. However, the clause relating to client services does not mention the same limitation.

There is an additional clause explicitly banning bank engagement with cryptocurrencies, but that is prefaced as relating to “their own crypto-assets”. Hence, the consistency between the two clauses reinforces our conclusion that approved banks may be allowed to provide cryptocurrency services to clients, including custody, on and off ramping, and trading.

Qualifying stablecoins and tokenized securities are classed as ‘group 1’ in much the same way as the Basel Committee divides crypto-assets. Cryptocurrencies are considered riskier and fall into group 2. The document is a first pass at implementing the Basel rules. It put a cap on bank group 1 exposures at 5% of capital, or 3% after hedging.

A payment provider may also qualify as a CASP. The National Bank of Cambodia is banning three activities relating to cryptocurrencies. CASPs may not use client assets for their own purposes, nor can they provide or enable lending services. They are not allowed to advertise a specific cryptocurrency, although they may advertise their own services.

No stablecoins for payments?

The third limitation appears to restrict the use of stablecoins for payments. It says a CASP is prevented from “Acting or providing any service that promotes or provides means for using Crypto assets to pay for goods and services.” It’s not clear whether that’s intentional or whether the target is for domestic payments only.

Stepping back, Cambodia launched the hugely successful blockchain base payment system, Bakong, in 2020. While commonly described as a CBDC, it’s actually closer to a tokenized deposit system. Cambodia is heavily dollarized, so the dollar aspect can’t be a CBDC. Bakong is widely used domestically but has also been integrated with several regional payment systems.

On the one hand, the use of stablecoins could detract from the success of Bakong. However, Bakong’s technology partner Soramitsu was planning to integrate stablecoins with Bakong for international payments. Technically, the Soramitsu plan is not targeting Cambodians, so the stablecoin restriction may not apply.

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