New California digital currency bill is a step backwards
The California Legislature has released a new version of AB 1326, and it’s bad news for anyone who loves Bitcoin and blockchain technology. Here are our top concerns.
The California Legislature has released a new version of AB 1326 [PDF], and it’s bad news for anyone who loves Bitcoin and blockchain technology. In the past we expressed our support for...
What does the CFTC have to do with the Bitfinex hack?
After the Bitfinex hack, the CFTC should open a rulemaking to clearly define what constitutes "actual delivery" of cryptocurrency under the Commodities and Exchange Act.
Yesterday we explained that CFTC’s enforcement action against Bitfinex was not the proximate cause of the exchange’s hack, but some are arguing that it was the but-for cause. It’s probably...
Open blockchains could be a democratizing force for social good.
The idea of incorruptible record keeping has gears turning in the minds of the international development community. But what does that mean?
...Maybe. But at the very least the idea of incorruptible record keeping has gears turning in the minds of the international development community. Problems from corruption-proofing land title systems to...
Neither the CFTC nor multi-sig are to blame for the Bitfinex hack
There are several complex issues, both in regulation and the technology, at play.
A hacker made off with $70 Million worth of Bitcoin held by Bitfinex. Some have observed that this hack came right on the heels of a CFTC-Bitfinex settlement that may...
The DC scene got a little dose of blockchain today.
Both Jerry Brito and Peter Van Valkenburgh joined other local experts and policymakers to discuss the state of this technology.
While some markets are up to their necks in blockchain conferences, they come somewhat fewer and further in between down here in wonderful Washington, DC. We appreciate any opportunity to...
The world’s regulators are racing to develop blockchain policy.
Our friends at Ripple have put out a great blog post that highlights some of the policy movement that have seen in Singapore and the United Kingdom.
If you follow our work you will be familiar with regulatory movement here in the United States, such as New York’s BitLicense, California’s AB 1326, and the Office of the...
After eight months, an update on the Blockchain Alliance
The Blockchain Alliance was announced last October. Since then it has grown from about 20 to over 50 members, including digital currency companies, law enforcement groups, and regulatory bodies from all over the world. But what has it been up to?
Last October, Coin Center and the Chamber of Digital Commerce announced that they had teamed up with our firm, Steptoe & Johnson LLP, to create the Blockchain Alliance, a coalition...
A Florida court just dismissed a money laundering case and said that bitcoin isn’t “money.”
That result is unsurprising given the uncertainty that surrounds state regulation of businesses in this space; an area of law we've been working hard to rationalize.
There's a great passage in the Court's opinion: The Florida Legislature may choose to adopt statutes regulating virtual currency in the future. At this time. however, attempting to fit the...
Patents for an open source project sound scary, but it makes sense.
Blockstream announced a defensive patent strategy. Patents can make open-source partisans queasy, but a defensive stragegy is exactly what the ecosytem needs to protect itself from charlatans and trolls.
Bitcoin was born of the open source movement, the sort of passionate fervor that makes you want to scream STALLMAN! late in the night, while charging the Oracle campus gates....
We got a data dump of all the complaints about “virtual currency” filed with the CFPB.
Through a FOIA request, we learned that there are just a handful, even though the thousands of complaints the CFPB responded with left us scratching our heads at first.
This was thanks to a Freedom of Information Request filed by Muckrock News. A first glance at the data left us scratching our heads. According to the CFPB response, there...