By Professor Tonya M. Evans
Welcome to this week’s CryptoSmartEsq News, my carefully curated list of current legal issues and events in blockchain and crypto.
If you’re new to this exciting, fast-developing space, check out the introductory video in the first CryptoSmartEsq news post. Follow me on Twitter at @CryptoSmartEsq (my blockchain and crypto-focused feed) and @IPProfEvans (my intellectual property-focused feed) and #EvansontheBlock for daily legal bits & bytes. Affiliate links noted with $.
Leave a comment and tweet me your news items.
Top Story
Crypto Self-Governance Touted as Solution to Regulatory ‘Mess’
“The question of whether self-regulation will help solve some of the cryptocurrency industry’s problems was on full display Monday during CoinDesk’s Consensus 2018 conference.
Part of the problem, according to panelist Gary DeWaal, a legal expert who focuses on financial services, is that existing rules as they relate to the tech are “an absolute mess.” And this situation, he contended, isn’t going away anytime soon.” [Read more at CoinDesk.com …]
Intellectual Property
Blockchain-based company Photochain takes another step forward to build a global brand to enable any digital image contributor to have full control over licensing and trading of their images.
Leader of “Global copyright register” company, Copytrack, explains how the service works … in 60 seconds!
Law & Government
“The companies might not seek a bank charter, which would significantly ramp up regulatory scrutiny. Any decision to do so would depend on whether they think the benefits of becoming a bank outweigh the costs.
A federal banking charter would let the firms swap a hodgepodge of state regulators for one primary federal one. The companies would also gain the option of directly offering customers federally insured bank accounts and other services, rather than joining with existing banks.” [Read more at WSJ.com …]
“In a review of documents produced for 1,450 digital coin offerings, The Wall Street Journal has found 271 with red flags that include plagiarized investor documents, promises of guaranteed returns and missing or fake executive teams.” [Read more at WSJ.com …]
Cases
The three co-founders of cryptocurrency firm Centra Tech have all been indicted by a grand jury, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced Monday.
Raymond Trapani, Sohrab Sharma and Robert Farkas have all been accused of planning to defraud investors through their company’s token sale. U.S. Attorney Robert Khuzami further announced that authorities had recovered more than $60 million in funds from the co-founders.” [Read more at TechCrunch.com …]
Education
The regulator announced [recently] it has launched a mock ICO called HoweyCoin, presumably named after the Howey Test, which “touts an all too good to be true investment opportunity.” However, the company notes, “the offer isn’t real.” Users who try to invest in the token sale will instead be redirected to the regulator’s education tools, which are aimed at pointing out the signs of fraudulent token sales.” [Read more at CoinDesk.com …]
Events
Professor Evans to speak at the following events:
May 31, 2018
- Panelist, Inaugural Patientory Stiftung Blockchain in Healthcare Summit (Atlanta, GA) (Legal Landscape for Blockchain)
June 14, 2018
- Panelist, Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit at the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center (San Francisco, CA)
June 21-23, 2018
- Panelist, Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies seminar organized by Minister of State for Grand Bahama Kwasi Thompson (The Bahamas)
List of Blockchain 2018 Events [CoinDesk.com]
Working Groups, Committees, & Orgs
Signup for Coinbase to receive $10 in $BTC after you buy or sell $100 worth of $BTC