The author would like to thank John Hodges and Elisa Li for their contributions to this post. The emergence of blockchain-supported Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) has captured the interest of the entertainment and business worlds in the past couple of years. Large digital transactions like that of Beeple NFT that sold for $69 million and the ever-mounting numbers … Continue Reading
A showdown is underway between the New York Attorney General’s Office and the companies that own and operate the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex and issue the stablecoin tether. In short, after months of investigation, the AG’s office has filed a lawsuit under New York’s Martin Act (the NY laws regulating securities and commodities fraud) against the … Continue Reading
The wake of the SEC’s guidance on classification of digital assets (here) and no-action letter to digital token issuer TurnKey Jet, Inc. (here), many may have forgotten or ignored that the final arbiter of the definition of “security” under federal law is not the SEC; it is the federal judiciary. On March 31, 2019, Judge … Continue Reading
On April 3, 2019, the SEC’s Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology (“FinHub”) issued a long-awaited framework for analyzing whether a given digital asset constitutes a “security” under federal law and is thus subject to the vast complex of federal securities laws and regulations. Simultaneously, the SEC’s Division of Corporate Finance issued its first … Continue Reading
