This term, Congress is set to consider several bills—each with bipartisan sponsorship—targeting the fields of blockchain, cryptocurrency, and fintech. This spurt of legislative activity indicates an increased awareness by lawmakers of both the opportunities for innovation in these fields and the potential pitfalls and risks for illicit use posed by these new technologies. The following are several of the bills that have been introduced this term to date which aim to promote blockchain and cryptocurrency:
- The Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (H.R. 528), introduced in ...
In a November 16, 2018 Statement on Digital Asset Securities Issuance and Trading, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced its current position on regulation of blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies. In its Statement, the SEC emphasized that "market participants must still adhere to our well-established and well-functioning federal securities law framework when dealing with technological innovations, regardless of whether the securities are issued in certificated form or using new technologies, such as blockchain."
The Statement relied on ...
On October 22, 2018, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York granted Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba's application for a preliminary injunction against cryptocurrency startup Alibabacoin Foundation. The preliminary injunction entered in Alibaba Grp. Holding Ltd. v. Alibabacoin Found., No. 18 Civ. 2897, 2018 WL 5118638 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 22, 2018) bars Alibabacoin Foundation from using Alibaba's protected marks to promote its novel cryptocurrency known as AlibabaCoin or Alibaba Coin.
Alibaba alleged that the defendants, a group of Dubai- and ...
Mick Mulvaney's tenure as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB" or "the Bureau"), a position he has held since November of 2017, is coming to an end. It is anticipated that President Trump's nominee, Kathleen Kraninger, will take over as the Bureau's director once confirmed by the Senate. In a speech to the Women in Housing and Finance group on May 29, 2018, Mulvaney announced that the Bureau is working closely with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to implement a "regulatory sandbox" that will enable financial technology ("FinTech") firms to ...
A distributed ledger often referred to as blockchain or distributed ledger technology ("DLT"), has a wide variety of potential uses and is currently being touted as a helpful tool for tracking financial transactions such as issuing and trading stock. Nonetheless, the nature of DLT raises some interesting jurisdictional questions and concerns.
At its core, a distributed ledger is a digital transaction record that is shared with multiple computers (also known as nodes) on a decentralized network. Distributed ledgers are often promoted as being almost immutable because the ...
Over the course of the past few years, Blockchain technology - a platform that acts as a digital ledger for assets - has rapidly grown in prominence. While it is perhaps most well-known for its connection to Bitcoin, the potential applications for Blockchain's technology go far beyond cryptocurrencies. Blockchain provides a peer-to-peer tool for sharing information about assets and transactions, such as digital goods, money, medical records, company records, intellectual property, contracts, and other types of data. This article seeks to provide a brief overview of Blockchain ...
In a previous post in this series, we provided an overview of blockchain technology and its benefits across industries. As a follow-up, below is an explanation of the technology in each block in a blockchain and how this technology functions to protect the integrity of the data on a blockchain.
Each block in a blockchain contains three key components. First, the block contains the stored data. For example, the blocks used in Bitcoin contain data regarding Bitcoin transactions, including the identification of the payor's electronic wallet, the payee's electronic wallet and the ...
Over the course of the past few years, blockchain technology - a platform that acts as a digital ledger for assets - has rapidly grown in prominence. A fundamental understanding of how this technology works, as well as its benefits, can be helpful in assessing opportunities to leverage the technology in any particular industry. This article provides a brief overview of blockchain technology and its advantages.
Blockchain provides a peer-to-peer tool for sharing information about assets and transactions, such as digital goods, money, medical records, company records ...