The Justice Insiders Podcast: Jarkesy’s Implications for the Administrative State
Turning up the Heat – A Look at the FTC’s Groundbreaking Fine Against Bankrupt Digital Asset Services Provider Celsius Network LLC - The Crypto Exchange Podcast
Blue Sky Laws: Defending State-Level Securities Violations
The Justice Insiders: The Administrative State is Not Your Friend - A Conversation with Professor Richard Epstein
Four Decision Points in SEC Securities Investigations
Business and Legal Issues Around Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies
The "Compass Rose" Method for Corporate Witness Interviews
Podcast: Credit Funds: Compliance Considerations for Valuation
Life Sciences Quarterly (Q3 2019): SEC Enforcement and Class Actions Regarding FDA Communications
Insider Trading News - Ralph Siciliano discusses US v. Newman
SEC Whistleblower Program: What Employers Need to Know
This monthly bulletin is designed to help companies identify important legal developments governing the use and acceptance of blockchain technology, smart contracts, and digital assets....more
Crypto Firms Announce New Products in Payments, Investments, Custody - A major U.S. digital asset management company recently announced the creation and public launch of its MakerDAO Trust, which “offers investors the...more
The number of securities class action filings increased in the first half of 2024 relative to the second half of 2023, according to a report released today by Cornerstone Research and the Stanford Law School Securities Class...more
Financial fraud is one of the most corrosive forms of corruption. Digital assets, and particularly cryptocurrency, are a ripe target for fraud. Frauds involving digital assets have grown significantly in recent years....more
The decision, which addresses a broad range of market activity by Coinbase relating to 13 third-party tokens, could have significant implications for market participants. On March 27, 2024, Judge Katherine Failla of the US...more
On April 5, 2024, a jury in the Southern District of New York found cryptocurrency startup Terraform Labs PTE Ltd. (the “Company”) and its co-founder, Do Kwon, liable for securities fraud. The jury sided with the SEC in...more
The biggest legal news of the past two weeks was the Coinbase loss on two of three categories of claims at the Judgment on the Pleadings stage of litigation against the SEC. While it is rare to win at such an early stage in...more
Recently, a decentralized finance crypto lending platform and its owners (respondents) entered into a settlement agreement with a Texas regulatory agency, resolving an emergency cease-and-desist action brought in June 2023....more
Last year, the Court in SEC v. Terraform Labs suggested, by denying the defendants’ motion to dismiss, that the sale of a digital asset to the public on a secondary market may constitute a security. Now, the Court has...more
In this episode of The Crypto Exchange, Troutman Pepper Partner Ethan Ostroff welcomes his colleagues Kim Phan and Addison Morgan to discuss the recent enforcement actions brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against...more
As of June 6, the SEC has brought 24 cryptocurrency enforcement actions between litigations and administrative proceedings. The number of cryptocurrency enforcement actions brought by the SEC in 2023 is advancing at a record...more
In Short - The Situation: In parallel federal actions, the Department of Justice ("DOJ"), Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), Commodity Futures Trading Commission ("CFTC"), and Federal Trade Commission ("FTC")...more
After months of bad news for cryptocurrency, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s latest moves could be apocalyptic for the industry. We previously wrote about the SEC’s Wells Notice issued to Coinbase in March 2023. A...more
On March 29, the SEC filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against a cryptocurrency trading platform and its executives for allegedly failing to register as a national securities...more
On February 7, 2023, Ishan Wahi (Ishan), a former Coinbase product manager, pled guilty to wire fraud charges in an indictment in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY)....more
On January 4, the SEC filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan against a cryptocurrency operation and connected individuals and entities (collectively, defendants), alleging that they...more
The emergence of digital assets has brought new risks and challenges, including the potential exploitation of the technology to facilitate financial crime. The U.S. Department of Justice has committed to work with its law...more
The Second Circuit held yesterday that a government agency’s nonpublic, pre-decisional regulatory information does not constitute “property” for purposes of the federal insider-trading and wire-fraud statutes. The decision...more
Takeaway: Ignorance was not bliss for Samuel Bankman-Fried. The young cryptocurrency entrepreneur faces 8 charges in the Southern District of New York for allegations that his company, FTX, mishandled millions of dollars of...more
The Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) on July 21, 2022, filed a complaint (the “SEC Complaint”) alleging insider trading violations against an insider, his brother, and a friend, claiming that the trio engaged in...more
On July 21, 2022, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) each alleged insider trading violations against a former Coinbase employee, his brother, and another alleged acquaintance...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
A recent action brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) against a former Coinbase employee for insider trading in crypto tokens (the “Wahi Action”) highlights the lack of certainty surrounding the...more
On July 21, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced parallel civil and criminal actions against a former product manager at Coinbase...more
On April 13, 2022, the Texas State Securities Board and Alabama Securities Commission issued separate emergency cease and desist orders (C&Ds) against Sand Vegas Casino Club and its two co-founders (Respondents). The C&Ds...more