From Court to Code: Smart Contracts and Arbitration
Powering Sustainable Crypto: A General Counsel’s View
From Paper to Digital: The California DMV's Leap Into Blockchain Technology — The Crypto Exchange Podcast
Dogecoin’s Day in Court
A Tale of Two Crypto Cases
Unpacking the Lummis-Gillibrand Payment Stablecoin Act: Implications for the Digital Asset Industry — The Crypto Exchange Podcast
Navigating the Regulatory Waters: The SEC's Wells Notice to Uniswap and its Impact on DeFi — The Crypto Exchange Podcast
Will Resiliency Carry the Digital Asset Sector Through 2024: Navigating the 2023 Regulatory Landscape — The Crypto Exchange Podcast
Understanding the CFPB's Proposed Digital Payments Larger Participants Rule and Its Implications for Digital Assets — The Consumer Finance Podcast
Hot Topics in International Trade-The Mod Act
What is sufficient originality for copyright? What is substantial similarity for copyright infringement? The latest artificial intelligence and intellectual property cases – authors lost contributory
Unraveling the Crypto Code: California's New DFAL Explained – The Crypto Exchange Podcast
Episode 302 -- Matt Stankiewicz on DOJ's Massive Criminal Settlement with Cryptocurrency Exchange Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao
The Justice Insiders Podcast: The Sam Bankman-Fried Trial: Defendants Testifying (Poorly), FOMO, and How to Actually Blame Lawyers
FINCast Ep. 38 – The Future of Crypto: A Conversation with Coinbase’s Faryar Shirzad
Analyzing the Treasury's Illicit Finance Risk Assessment of Decentralized Finance - The Crypto Exchange Podcast
Digital Planning Podcast Episode: Exploring DAOs
Current Landscape of Cryptocurrency Regulation and Enforcement - The Crypto Exchange Podcast
Current Landscape of Cryptocurrency Regulation and Enforcement - The Consumer Finance Podcast
Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast Episode: A Deep Dive Into Cryptocurrency and its Risks to Investors and the Banking System, with Arthur E. Wilmarth, George Washington University Law School
FIT21 would provide regulatory certainty for the US digital asset ecosystem, balancing support for innovation with consumer protection....more
On July 13, 2023, the Court ruled in partial favor of Ripple Labs Inc.’s argument that many of its XRP sales did not violate investor-protection laws. The ruling has sent the crypto world ablaze with speculation on the future...more
In April 2023, the SEC re-proposed amendments to Exchange Act Rule 3b-16 to expand the definition of what it means to be an exchange. When the SEC initially proposed these amendments in January 2022, there were zero direct...more
The Blockchain Bi-Weekly presented by the Polsinelli Blockchain+ team is a rundown of some of the key stories in the Web3, blockchain and crypto ecosystems curated by our attorneys navigating the intersections of code, smart...more
The Securities and Exchange Commission recently brought its first two enforcement actions against issuers of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), resulting in cease-and-desist orders, penalties and other remedies, finding that the...more
Three federal judges in the Southern District of New York sit at the center of the long-running battle between the SEC and the crypto industry, overseeing cases that may eventually bring clarity to the industry. After two...more
For the past several years, many have viewed “SEC v. Ripple” as one of the defining conflicts in the US crypto regulatory landscape. At the heart of this dispute is the question of whether digital tokens are “securities” for...more
On July 13, 2023, Judge Analisa Torres in the Southern District of New York issued the much-anticipated summary judgment order in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) case against Ripple Labs and two senior leaders,...more
Dapper Labs was founded in 2018 shortly after the debut of its first NFT collection, “CryptoKitties,” which was so successful it created a bottleneck of transactions on the decentralized Ethereum Network. Seeking faster...more
While a conclusion to the much-hyped case may be approaching, market participants should be wary of doomsday prognostications. As a new year begins, the digital assets industry is still enduring a deep and widespread crypto...more
On November 7, 2022, Judge Paul Barbadoro of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire issued an order in SEC v. LBRY, Inc., granting the SEC’s motion for summary judgment against LBRY Inc. (LBRY). The court...more
In granting the SEC’s motion for summary judgment, a federal court ruled that sales of LBC tokens were securities transactions. On November 7, 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) prevailed in a motion for...more
While the blockchain crypto community is processing the latest round of “crypto contagion,” potentially lost in the busy news week was a significant legal development regarding what digital assets qualify as securities under...more
This year had already seen an uptick in federal enforcement activity focused on digital assets with the expansion of the SEC’s Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit (see our prior client alert on that expansion and its impact here)...more
What is Tokenization? Tokenization is the process of converting an asset into a token on the blockchain. It operates by dividing—or fractionalizing—the ownership of an asset (whether the asset is a piece of real estate or...more
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are digital assets that are sharply rising in popularity. Every day, individuals are launching new NFT projects with similar or new features compared to prior NFT projects. NFTs are attractive to...more
On Wednesday, March 9, President Biden issued an Executive Order entitled Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets. The President’s order represents the first time that the White House has sought to develop a...more
STOs and NFTs - STOs stands for “security token offerings.” They involve an offering of digitalized securities such as stocks, bonds, or other token and coin projects. The difference between an IPO and an STO is that STOs...more
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) provide new avenues of investment and secured lending opportunities for borrowers and lenders alike but also raise number of legal considerations....more
A key question for any company considering the issuance of cryptocurrency is whether that digital asset will be treated by regulators as a security, like BP stock, or a commodity, like Bitcoin. In 2019, the Securities and...more
Whether a cryptocurrency product is a security is an issue with serious regulatory consequences. In recent years, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) has taken a broad position that various crypto assets are...more
On July 14, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) settled an action against the operator of a platform that promoted current and upcoming digital token offerings for violations of the anti-touting provision of...more
With offerings across a growing number of online platforms and increased trading volume, NFT issuers, promoters, and buyers should consider the legal and regulatory implications relating to NFTs and federal securities laws. ...more
NFTs are extremely hot right now. In March 2021, the digital artist Beeple made history when he sold his NFT of digital art for $69.3 million through Christie’s auction house. Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet as an NFT for...more
On December 21, 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a high-profile enforcement action against a major cryptocurrency company. The SEC complaint alleges violations of federal securities laws by defendant...more