Decentralized Finance, Crypto Funds, and Value Creation in Tokenized Firms

By Paul P. Momtaz, Niclas Dombrowski, Wolfgang Drobetz and Douglas J. Cumming May 31, 2022 by renholding

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) employs blockchain technology and smart contracts with the goal of enabling perfectly disintermediated financial markets. Despite the far-reaching ambition, DeFi markets are experiencing increasing intermediation recently, as a new type of intermediary, so-called Crypto Funds (henceforth, CFs), …

Sullivan & Cromwell Discusses California Governor’s Executive Order on Blockchain

By Aaron Levine, Michelle Thiry, Rebecca Simmons and Sarah Payne May 11, 2022 by renholding

On May 4, California Governor Gavin Newson signed an executive order that is intended “to foster responsible innovation, bolster California’s innovation economy, and protect consumers” and “create a transparent regulatory and business environment for web3 companies which harmonizes federal and …

Does the First Sale Doctrine Apply to NFTs?

By Desiree Moshayedi January 5, 2022 by renholding

An NFT is a non-fungible token that represents a particular copy of digital work.[1] It is a digital certificate of ownership that is secured on the blockchain, effectively creating a traceable record of every time the NFT changes hands.…

SEC Chair Gensler Discusses Crypto Regulation

By Gary Gensler August 4, 2021 by renholding

Some might wonder: What does the SEC have to do with crypto?

Further, why did an organization like the Aspen Security Forum ask me to speak about crypto’s intersection with national security?

As is customary, I’d like to note that …

National Blockchain Laws Are a Threat to Capital Markets Integration

By Matthias Lehmann August 3, 2021 by renholding

Since its creation in 2008, the blockchain has seemed incompatible with legal constraint. Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, hailed the blockchain’s “unstructured simplicity.” Even now, apostles of distributed ledger technology (DLT) strongly resist the idea that …

Extraterritorial Reach of U.S. Crypto Regulation by the SEC

By Carol Goforth April 27, 2021 by renholding

In 2008, the world ushered in the blockchain era[1] with a whitepaper posted pseudonymously in an online discussion of cryptography under the name “Satoshi Nakamoto.”[2] That paper formed the foundation for Bitcoin, the first blockchain-hosted cryptoasset,[3] a …

O’Melveny & Myers Discusses the Legal Challenges of NFTs

By Heather J. Meeker, Laurel Loomis Rimon, Eric Sibbitt and Braddock Stevenson April 14, 2021 by Nisha Chandra

Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs, are big news these days. After an NFT for a piece of digital art by the artist Beeple (Mike Winkelmann) sold for $69 million in March 2021―making it the third-most expensive artwork by a living …

How Blockchain-Based Financial Markets Can Create Systemic Risks That Harm Lower-Income People

By Heather Hughes March 29, 2021 by renholding

Blockchain-based platforms create exciting possibilities for financial inclusion: widespread ownership of deposit accounts and access to payments services. From a macro-level perspective, however, these platforms can aggravate systemic risks. Systemic instability, in turn, threatens financial inclusion and sustainability.

Sustainable finance, …

Latham & Watkins Discusses Whether NFTs Are Securities

By Stephen P. Wink, Miles P. Jennings, Shaun Musuka and Deric Behar March 19, 2021 by Nisha Chandra

As the current crypto boom has progressed, it seemed Decentralized Finance (DeFi) had cemented its position as the dominant new narrative of this cycle. This view is supported by the tens of billions of dollars that have flowed into DeFi …

Goodwin Procter Discusses SEC Statement on Custody of Digital Asset Securities

By Nicholas J. Losurdo, Peter W. LaVigne and Jana Steenholdt January 13, 2021 by Nisha Chandra

Christmas came early for many in the digital asset community by way of a statement from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC” or “Commission”) on December 23, 2020 that grants relief in the area of broker “custody” of digital …

Crypto-Enforcement Around the World

By Douglas S. Eakeley and Yuliya Guseva November 24, 2020 by renholding

The market for cryptoassets is burgeoning, as distributed ledger technology transforms capital and financial markets. With the extraordinary growth in the crypto-markets comes the need for regulation to promote efficiency, capital formation, and innovation while protecting investors. With the need …

What Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence Won’t Do for Corporate Lawyers

By Jeffrey M. Lipshaw September 15, 2020 by renholding

There have been a number of scholarly paeans to blockchain as a corporate governance tool. It creates a permanent and irreversible chain of custody that can be used for shareholder record keeping and voting, insider trading, corporate disclosures, and trade …

Why the Proposed Blockchain Token Safe Harbor Makes Sense

By Lee A. Schneider April 24, 2020 by renholding

The application of the U.S. securities laws to blockchain tokens has been a controversial subject, with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) taking an aggressive posture. On February 6, 2020, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce proposed a non-exclusive safe harbor from …

How Nudges Can Help Regulate New Technologies

By Nissim Cohen and Hadar Y. Jabotinsky April 17, 2020 by renholding

New technologies are being introduced in markets around the globe. Disruptive innovations such as blockchain, cryptocurrencies, the Internet of things, automated cars and other products that support decision-making based on artificial intelligence (AI) are offering a creative take on traditional …

Will FinTech Disruption in the ‘20s Be Roaring?

By Troy A. Paredes and Lee A. Schneider April 3, 2020 by renholding

In recent podcasts, we addressed three themes, among other topics: how artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) can change how decisions get made; how blockchain can transform how we transact and how we record and communicate things; and how technology …

SEC Commissioner Peirce Offers Proposal to Fill Gap Between Regulation and Decentralization

By Hester M. Peirce February 11, 2020 by renholding

I appreciate the opportunity to be with all of you today. Before beginning, I have to remind you that the views I express are my own and do not necessarily represent those of the Securities and Exchange Commission or my

…

Blockchain in Corporate Governance: Implications for Attorneys

By Adam Sulkowski and Joan MacLeod Heminway December 16, 2019 by renholding

Blockchain-based information storage, retrieval, and tracking have the potential to be more immediate, transparent, and credible means of business recordkeeping than alternatives involving a centralized point of control.[1] As a result it should be unsurprising that corporations have begun …

Blockchain-Based Corporate Governance

By Wulf Kaal September 6, 2019 by renholding

Corporate governance is characterized by agency constructs. The agency relationship in modern finance and corporate governance is characterized by attempts to optimize incentives between principals and agents, control costs, minimize information asymmetries, control adverse selection and moral hazard, optimize risk …

Fintech and Banking

By Anjan V. Thakor August 14, 2019 by renholding

In a recent paper, I review the literature on fintech and its interaction with banking. Included in fintech are innovations in payment systems (including cryptocurrencies), credit markets (including peer-to-peer or “P2P” lending), and insurance, with blockchain-assisted smart contracts playing a …

Riding the Mania of Blockchain: Public Firms’ Speculative 8-K Disclosures

By Stephanie F. Cheng, Gus De Franco, Haibo Jiang and Pengkai Lin August 7, 2019 by renholding

The price of Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency based on blockchain technology, increased dramatically from less than a penny when it was launched in 2009 to $900 in January 2017 and peaked at over $19,500 in December 2017. This rise coincided with …

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