From Court to Code: Smart Contracts and Arbitration
Powering Sustainable Crypto: A General Counsel’s View
Crypto & Politics: Insights from Former Congressman David McIntosh
Exploring the AI and Crypto Intersection
Ask a CFIUS Expert: Is Crypto Spying on Us?
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
Podcast: Is Cryptocurrency a Security (like an orange grove)?
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: Federal Legislative Developments and OFAC Consent Orders — The Crypto Exchange Podcast
Will Resiliency Carry the Digital Asset Sector Through 2024: State-Level Developments — The Crypto Exchange Podcast
Will Resiliency Carry the Digital Asset Sector Through 2024: Navigating the 2023 Regulatory Landscape — The Crypto Exchange Podcast
The Justice Insiders Podcast - Demystifying Sentences for White Collar Crimes: What's Next for SBF
Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast Episode: The Federal Trade Commission: Looking Back at 2023 and Looking Ahead to 2024 and Beyond
No Password Required: Security Analyst at Rice University, WiCys Global Book Club Host, and No Password Required’s Poet Laureate
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
The settlement is the latest example of the agency’s enhanced criminal enforcement of money transmitting business and international money-laundering laws. The recent settlement is significant both in terms of its amount...more
CryptoLink is a compilation of news stories published by outside organizations. Akin aggregates the stories, but the information contained in them does not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of the firm. Akin's May...more
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) has issued its Year in Review for FY 2023 (“YIR”). It consists of five pages of infographics. According to FinCEN’s press release...more
Last week, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York unsealed an indictment against global cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin and two of its founders, Chun Gan and Ke Tang, for allegedly conspiring...more
The Department of Justice (“DOJ”) has been very active in the Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) / Anti-Money Laundering (“AML”) space, as reflected by a recent series of individual prosecutions and corporate non-prosecution agreements...more
Binance to Pay Historic $4 Billion Fine - Binance Holdings Limited, the operator of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, agreed to pay $4.3 billion to resolve allegations that it violated the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA)...more
As the world now knows, Binance Holdings Limited, doing business as Binance.com (“Binance” or the “Company”), has entered into a plea agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”)....more
On October 13, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) signed Assembly Bill 39 (Digital Financial Assets Law). This new law broadly empowers the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) to govern...more
Despite the excitement that surrounded original cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the dust eventually settled, revealing that only a few early investors got rich and many others lost their life savings. But it was not long...more
Legislation Targets Unhosted Wallets, Validators and Digital Asset ATMs - On July 28th, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), reintroduced the...more
On January 17, 2023, U.S. law enforcement authorities in Miami arrested Anatoly Legkodymov, a Russian national and the founder and majority owner of Hong Kong-based virtual currency exchange Bitzlato Ltd., on charges of money...more
The rising prevalence of crypto and virtual currencies has invited the scrutiny of several regulatory bodies who continue to grapple with the unique challenges posed by blockchain technology, FinCEN being one prime example....more
July was a hot month for crypto enforcement, but August is off to a hot start in its own right. On August 2, 2022, the New York State Department of Financial Services (the “Department”) issued a Consent Order with Robinhood’s...more
In 1970, Congress passed the Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act, commonly known as the “Bank Secrecy Act” (BSA). The BSA is often referred to as an “anti-money laundering” (AML) law or jointly as “BSA/AML.” The...more
Companies across every industry are jumping into non-fungible tokens (NFTs), seeking to seize what they perceive as huge business opportunities. Attorneys working in the space see myriad reasons to be bullish, despite a...more
The Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 took effect on Jan. 1 and is the most significant anti-money laundering statute since the USA Patriot Act was passed after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Its primary purpose was to update...more
According to one blockchain and cryptocurrency security firm, this year is on pace to be the second highest in cryptocurrency theft, hacking and fraud, with January through May 2020 already seeing $1.36 billion stolen in...more
Last Thursday, FinCEN Deputy Director Jamal El-Hindi appeared at the 20th annual Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Financial Crimes Conference hosted by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) in New...more
Earlier this month, the leaders of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission released a joint statement reminding individuals...more
On May 9, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network of the US Department of the Treasury (FinCEN) issued guidance relating to how its regulations apply to certain businesses that transact in "convertible virtual currencies"...more
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is the U.S. Treasury Department bureau charged with monitoring financial transactions in order to combat domestic and international money laundering, terrorist financing and...more
The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued guidance on May 9, 2019, underscoring the application of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and its implementing regulations relating to money...more
Academics Detect Manipulation on ‘DEXes’ as Cryptocurrency Trading Expands - A recent academic paper by researchers at Cornell Tech and other academic institutions describes rampant trading manipulation on decentralized...more
According to its original design, Bitcoin was intended to reduce market participants’ need to rely on “financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments.”1 While Bitcoin and other...more
Earlier this month, the District Court for the Central District of California imposed a prison sentence of one year and a day, with three years of supervised release, on defendant Theresa Lynn Tetley, who had pleaded guilty...more