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...
A resolution calling for a pro-bitcoin national policy was just introduced in Congress.
A resolution isn't binding, but we love this bi-partisan pro-innovation, pro-fintech, and pro-cryptocurrency statement.
The bi-partisan H.R. 835 was introduced by Rep. Adam Kinzinger and co-sponsored by Rep. Tony Cardenas. Its preamble cites bitcoin and blockchain innovation: Whereas emerging payment options, including alternative non-fiat...
A law firm just filed a petition with the CFTC asking for a “comprehensive rulemaking” on Bitcoin.
Actual delivery of a commodity after an exchange exempts you from commodity futures regulations, so what the heck counts as "actual delivery" of bitcion?
Steptoe and Johnson, which has many Bitcoin industry clients, is asking that the commission clarify what constitues as “actual delivery” of bitcoins after a transaction. As Houman Shadab, Andrea Castillo,...
Is your crypto-crowdsale a security?
Peter Van Valkenburgh went on The Ether Review podcast to discuss the work we have done in educating securities regulators about the finer points of DAOs and other cryptotoken based crowdfunds.
The legal test for what is and is not considered a security is pretty flexible. Beyond the financial instruments that obviously fit the bill, things as weird as orange groves...
What does Coin Center actually do day-to-day, anyway?
That’s a question we’re frequently asked, and the reason we’re asked this so often is because we rarely talk about what we actually do day-to-day. We don’t talk about it...