- Posts by Katherine West
AssociateKatherine West is an Associate in the Birmingham office where she practices in the firm's Financial Services Litigation group.
Katherine earned her Juris Doctor from Vanderbilt University Law School, where she served as an ...
On April 18, 2019, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network ("FinCEN") announced its first enforcement action against a peer-to-peer virtual currency exchanger. See FinCEN Penalizes Peer-to-Peer Virtual Currency Exchanger for Violations of Anti-Money Laundering Laws, Fin. Crimes Enforcement Network (April 18, 2019) [hereinafter FinCEN Release], https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/fincen-penalizes-peer-peer-virtual-currency-exchanger-violations-anti-money. The enforcement action was against Eric Powers ("Powers") for violations of the Bank ...
In Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. My Big Coin Pay, Inc., --- F. Supp. 3d ---, 2018 WL 4621727 (D. Mass. Sept. 26, 2018), the Massachusetts District Court determined that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ("CFTC") sufficiently alleged the virtual currency known as My Big Coin ("MBC") is a commodity and denied the defendants' motion to dismiss.
The CFTC alleged that the defendants "enticed customers to buy [MBC]," a virtual currency, "by making various untrue and/or misleading statements and omitting material facts." 2018 WL 4621727, at *1. Specifically, the CFTC ...
On July 26, 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a 92-page release disapproving of Bats BZX Exchange, Inc.'s ("BZX") proposed rule change which sought to list and trade shares of the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust.[1] See generally Bats BZX Exch., Inc. Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust Order, Exchange Act Release No. 34-83723, 2018 WL 3596769 (July 26, 2018) [hereinafter SEC Release].[2] The Release explains that the Commission disapproved of the proposal because BZX failed to meet its obligations under Exchange Act Section 6(b)(5).
Section 6(b) of the Exchange Act sets forth ...
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 ...