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 …

SEC Commissioner Discusses Cross-Border Cooperation in Digital-Asset Regulation

By Hester M. Peirce August 6, 2019 by renholding

Thank you, Robby [Greene], for that kind intro. I am delighted to see that Robby, once my research assistant, has clearly gone on to bigger and better things. I also am delighted to be here in Singapore, by some accounts

…

ICO vs. IPO: Empirical Findings, Information Asymmetry, and the Appropriate Regulatory Framework

By Moran Ofir and Ido Sadeh August 5, 2019 by renholding

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are a new form of fundraising whereby blockchain-related ventures raise public capital in exchange for newly issued digital tokens. The issued tokens may represent a variety of rights, ranging from financial rights – such as dividend …

Blockchain Will Not Solve the Proxy Voting Problem

By Park Bramhall July 31, 2019 by renholding

The U.S. proxy voting process is widely viewed as inefficient, opaque, and frequently inaccurate. The conventional wisdom is that voting inaccuracy has arisen largely as a result of decisions made in the 1960s to transition to a system of share …

Libra: The Regulatory Challenges Facebook Ignored

By Georges Ugeux July 11, 2019 by renholding

The announcement on June 18 by Facebook of what it calls “a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people” was sure to receive immediate attention. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now on a global …

Can Blockchain Create a Corporate-Governance Revolution at Public Companies?

By Federico Panisi, Ross P. Buckley and Douglas W. Arner July 1, 2019 by renholding

In a new paper, we analyze the major disconnect between the theory of corporate governance, its legal expression, and the reality of corporate ownership structures, based on an “indirect holding system” (IHS), which has evolved from complex existing technological …

Blockchain Developers and Fiduciary Duty: An Ill-Fitting Framework

By Raina S. Haque, Rodrigo Seira Silva-Herzog, Brent A. Plummer and Nelson M. Rosario June 21, 2019 by renholding

By enabling new modes of human interaction, technological advancements catalyze the evolution of regulatory frameworks, tools, and approaches. The rate at which computer technology evolves outpaces that of legislation and rule-making. Our economy is increasingly structured not only by traditional …

The Imperative for Blockchain Accounting

By Dov Fischer June 7, 2019 by renholding

For hundreds of years, the basic flowchart of accounting information has been the same. A firm records its own transactions, maintains a record of those transactions, and reports those transactions (Soll, 2014, xiv). Trends in technology make it inevitable that …

Blockchain Solutions for Agency Problems in Corporate Governance

By Wulf Kaal May 23, 2019 by renholding

As a foundational technology, blockchain creates the infrastructure for decentralized networked governance that, over time, creates the environment that enables the removal of internal and external monitoring mechanisms previously necessitated by agency problems in corporate governance. Blockchain technology facilitates a …

What Public Blockchain Protocol Governance Can Learn from Corporate Governance

By Carla L. Reyes May 7, 2019 by renholding

Despite the hype, blockchain technology remains in an early phase of development. Indeed, for many public blockchain protocols, the process of building consensus around the desired trajectory of the code base remains under-conceptualized and informal. Such uncertainty has led to …

Cleary Gottlieb on France’s New Framework for Approving ICOs

By Mark A. Adams and Jeanne Theuret May 6, 2019 by renholding

On April 11, 2019, the French parliament adopted a law (the “Loi Pacte”or “Law”)[1] that establishes a new regulatory framework for initial coin offerings (“ICOs”) of blockchain based tokens by entities established or registered in France. At the …

Initial Crypto-asset Offerings, Tokenization, and Corporate Governance

By Stéphane Blemus and Dominique Guégan May 1, 2019 by renholding

Blockchain and other types of distributed ledger technology pose various new legal and economic questions for companies. Are crypto-asset holders a new kind of corporate stakeholder? If so, are they like shareholders or bondholders, and how can they participate in …

Davis Polk Discusses France’s New Legal Framework for Digital Assets

By Christophe Perchet, Juliette Loget, Jean-Christophe Devouge, Stéphane Daniel and Daniel Arroche April 25, 2019 by renholding

After becoming one of the first countries to authorize the registration and transfer of unlisted securities using blockchain technology, France has adopted an innovative legal framework governing initial coin offerings (“ICOs”) and digital assets services providers (“DASPs”) with the aim …

Davis Polk Discusses Investing in Blockchain Technology

By Daniel Brass, Daniel F. Forester, Joseph A. Hall, Trevor I. Kiviat and Jai R. Massari April 18, 2019 by renholding

Blockchain technology continues to be a lively topic of conversation in legal, business and technology circles. This includes heated debates about whether and when the technology will deliver on its many promises and how the most common applications employing blockchain—that …

SEC Offers Framework for “Investment Contract” Analysis of Digital Assets

By Securities and Exchange Commission April 8, 2019 by renholding

If you are considering[1] an Initial Coin Offering, sometimes referred to as an “ICO,” or otherwise engaging in the offer, sale, or distribution of a digital asset,[2] you need to consider whether the U.S. federal securities laws apply.

…

SEC Commissioner Offers Inside View of the Regulation Machine

By Hester M. Peirce February 13, 2019 by renholding

I had high expectations when I picked up Thom [Lambert’s] book on regulation shortly after it first came out several years ago.[1] Those expectations were exceeded by the clear and compelling way in which the book wrestles with the

…

Debevoise Discusses Possible EU Approach to ICOs and Crypto-Assets

By Klaudius Heda, Clarisse Hannotin, Dr. Oliver Krauß and Dr. Friedrich Popp January 30, 2019 by abirvarma

In the first week of 2019, both the European Securities and Markets Authority (“ESMA”) and the European Banking Authority (“EBA”) issued reports advising EU legislators on the regulation of “crypto-assets” and initial coin offerings (“ICOs”). The European Supervisory Authorities (“ESAs”), …

Debevoise & Plimpton Discusses Custody of Digital Assets

By Kenneth J. Berman, Byungkwon Lim and Gary E. Murphy January 8, 2019 by renholding

Interest in cryptocurrencies and other digital assets on blockchains or distributed ledgers[1] has increased exponentially in recent years. The total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets on blockchains increased from slightly more than $17.5 billion in January …

« Previous 1 2 3 4 Next »

The CLS Blue Sky Blog

Columbia Law School's Blog on Corporations and the Capital Markets

blockchain