Creating A User Friendly Blockchain with Andrew Levine, CEO, Koinos Group
An Introduction to Crypto for Financial Services Professionals
ollowing the approval and launch of Bitcoin Exchange Traded Funds (EFTs) in January 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved eight Ethereum ETFs for listing and trading on SEC-regulated exchanges on...more
Crypto assets are some of the most rapidly evolving and increasingly adopted assets in the world. Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is emerging as a blockchain-based alternative to traditional banking and financial services and...more
Financial Firms Complete Blockchain Pilot, UK Approves Crypto ETNs - A recent press release announced completion of the Canton Network pilot, “a first-of-its-kind program demonstrating the interoperability of twenty-two...more
The New Year is upon us, which means plenty of news stories looking back at blockchain events in 2023, such as this one (From NFTs to XRP: the biggest crypto stories of 2023 (Axios)), this one (The Year that Cryptocurrency...more
Way back (if we’re counting tech years) in 2014, artist Kevin McCoy (“McCoy”) created a digital record of his pulsating, octagon-shaped digital artwork Quantum on the Namecoin blockchain on May 2, 2014, thereby minting “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
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 Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) issued a cease-and-desist order on August 28, 2023, charging Impact Theory, LLC (“Impact Theory”) with conducting an unregistered offering of crypto asset securities in violation...more
In a published settlement of the charges on August 28, 2023, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) stated that non-fungible tokens (“NFTs”) issued by Impact Theory, LLC (“Impact”) were “securities” under US...more
Summary - The SEC’s focus on the crypto industry expanded this week to include non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In its first NFT-enforcement action, the SEC settled with Impact Theory, a media and entertainment company, over...more
Key Points - On August 28, 2023, the SEC charged Impact Theory, LLC, a media company with an unregistered securities offering through its sale of NFTs. This marks the first time that the SEC has brought an enforcement action...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
In a major Web3 trademark infringement case, NFT creators prevail over those with a bad-faith intent to profit. On April 21, 2023, Yuga Labs, the original creators of the Board Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) non-fungible token...more
As discussed in Part I of this series, Ordinals are a pioneering new method of utilizing the Bitcoin blockchain that will usher in new and innovative use cases on Bitcoin. As promised, in Part II we will discuss the...more
The NFT community has been humming in 2023 after the recent rise in Bitcoin NFT mints. Ordinals, a non-fungible token (“NFT”) protocol, sent the community buzzing in January 2023 when it launched on the Bitcoin blockchain (as...more
On the heels of recent legal setbacks and challenges for NFT collections offered by Dapper Labs and DraftKings, the New York Attorney General (NYAG) filed suit in New York state court against the parent companies of...more
On March 9, 2023, the New York State Attorney General’s Office (NYAG) filed a lawsuit charging crypto trading platform KuCoin for “failing to register as a securities and commodities broker-dealer and falsely representing...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
DeFi Protocols Announce Updates, US Bank Introduces Deposit Token Concept - According to recent reports, Rocket Pool, a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol used as an Ethereum (ETH) staking service, has reached $1...more
Four days after FTX, once the world’s third-largest crypto exchange, filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy, former FTX investors filed a class action against 11 athletes and celebrities who promoted FTX in advertisements...more
New Crypto Payment Products Launch, Reports Publish Crypto Market Data A recent press release announced that MetaMask, the popular Ethereum (ETH) Network crypto wallet provider, will integrate its self-custodial wallets...more
The overlap of social media, celebrity endorsement, and cryptocurrency have long been viewed as a potential breeding ground for regulatory and litigation liability. The proliferation of cryptocurrency and the lack of...more
At 2:43am EST on September 15, 2022, the first Ethereum block was validated using Proof of Stake, signaling the success of the Ethereum Merge, one of the most anticipated events in blockchain and computer science history. The...more
The regime introduces rules on various crypto tokens, including cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, in the Dubai International Financial Centre. On November 1, 2022, the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) crypto...more
In late October, a New York district court refused to dismiss the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) indictment against defendant Nathaniel Chastain, who was charged with wire fraud and money laundering relating to his using...more