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
This past August, the US Securities and Exchange Commission took enforcement action against Impact Theory, a US media company that sold NFTs called “KeyNFTs.” It filed a second enforcement action shortly thereafter, against...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 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
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
On March 9, 2023, a putative class action was filed against DraftKings Inc. for alleged violations of federal securities laws in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The class, if certified, will include...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
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
The cryptocurrency and blockchain industry has developed over the past decade with a large and increasingly glaring void: What regulations ultimately will apply and who will regulate the space? Much regulatory focus to date...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
“Decentralization” is a concept that has consistently vexed the entire blockchain-enabled ecosystem in the U.S., including its counsel and regulators, wherein a lack of clarity on the exact definition of decentralization has...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
In a closely-watched cryptocurrency case, on September 30, the Southern District of New York ruled in favor of the SEC in SEC v. Kik Interactive, Inc., holding that the Kin tokens Kik had offered and sold through a pre-sale...more
On September 30, 2020, SDNY Judge Alvin Hellerstein issued a decision of major significance for the digital token industry in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Kik Interactive, Inc. This is only the second federal court...more
On March 2, Orrick had the pleasure of hosting SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce for a fireside chat discussion at our San Francisco office on the state of blockchain and cryptocurrency, the emerging regulatory landscape and her...more
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce continues to be one of the most vocal persons in leadership positions at federal regulators who are promoting innovation in digital currency and the blockchain....more
On February 6, 2020, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce presented her proposal of a new regulatory scheme for legal ICOs in the United States (“Safe Harbor”). To date, token issuers have struggled with the U.S. Securities and...more