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
Big news dropped in the past few weeks, which sent shockwaves across the industry: according to a recently filed lawsuit, the SEC has classified the second largest cryptocurrency, Ether, as a security in certain ongoing...more
The March decision in Williams v. Binance from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit marks the latest chapter in the judiciary's struggle to apply the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Morrison v. National...more
The focus in Web3 law the past few weeks has been on jurisdictional issues when litigating matters involving borderless digital asset transactions. This is expected to be an ongoing issue, as courts work through these...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
Federal and state regulators have taken an increased interest in regulating cryptocurrencies, digital assets, and the larger blockchain ecosystem. This landscape is opaque and rapidly evolving, and many industry participants...more
Key Point - Just over two weeks after the SEC announced the settlement of its first NFT enforcement action against Impact Theory, on September 13, 2023, the SEC announced its second NFT enforcement action against SC2, the...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
An offering of non-fungible tokens was deemed an unlawful offering of securities without registration by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a novel Order of first impression accepting a settlement of proposed charges...more
Federal District Court Enters Default Judgment Based on NFT Service of Process - A federal district court judge in Florida entered a $2.2 million default judgment against a defendant on whom the judge previously authorized...more
Key Point - Just shy of three weeks after Judge Torres held that the digital asset XRP is not itself a security,1 Judge Rakoff held that the SEC had adequately pled that certain digital assets, such as the UST and LUNA...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
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) is paying considerable attention to the world of cryptocurrency (“crypto”). According to the SEC website, the SEC has brought more than 50 enforcement actions against crypto...more
The SEC suffered a significant loss last week in its ongoing legal battle with Ripple over the XRP digital token. While the District Court held that Ripple’s initial sales of XRP to institutional investors constituted the...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
The Digital Asset Market Structure “(DAMS”) discussion draft bill attempts to provide regulatory clarity on crucial blockchain industry issues. These issues include when a blockchain is legally considered decentralized, the...more
We have previously discussed the thorny intellectual property implications of non-fungible tokens (“NFTs”), units of data stored on a blockchain that signify ownership of a unique digital media item. But another emergent...more
The start of 2023 hasn’t gone much better for the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry than the end of 2022 did. In declining to dismiss a case alleging that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) called Moments are considered...more
On February 9, 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) charged Kraken with offering and selling Kraken’s Staking Program – its staking-as-a-service product – as an unregistered security. Kraken, more...more
With the announcement of charges against and a settlement with two subsidiaries of a prominent crypto exchange, Kraken, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) appears to have a new target within the blockchain...more
Throughout a tumultuous 2022, the digital currency and blockchain space saw a number of significant investigation, litigation, and enforcement matters as regulators continue their laser focus on the industry. This Year in...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
The US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled on December 20, 2022, that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) properly served the defendant, Ooki DAO, by posting summons documents in Ooki...more
This edition of CryptoLink follows the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, and lawmakers in Congress are now outlining ambitious agenda priorities for next Congress, putting digital assets near the top of the list. Following the FTX...more
If the ongoing fallout from the collapse of offshore cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, and now BlockFi wasn’t enough, crypto investors also lost a significant battle last month in the U.S. District Court of New Hampshire....more
A basic truism — you do not want to become the subject of a Justice Department investigation. The wheels of justice — prosecutors and law enforcement — can cause real harm to organizations and individuals that violate the...more