London is considered the European capital for fintech, and the third global tech start-up ecosystem, behind only Silicon Valley and New York. In the past two and a half years, fintech companies have brought more than $5 billion of investment to the city. Given that a third of London's tech company customers are based outside the UK and an estimated 54% of the city's fintech workforce comes from abroad, uncertainty over how Brexit will affect the ability of British companies to transact business and recruit talent internationally poses a threat to London's fintech prominence.

On March ...

Posted in: FinTech

On November 29, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced in a press release that it has settled charges against two celebrities for promoting investments in ICOs without disclosing payments received for the promotion. The SEC has previously indicated in a November 2017 statement to the public that investors should be wary of celebrity-backed ICOs, but these are the SEC's first cases against celebrities for promoting ICOs for compensation without appropriate disclosures.

Music producer Khaled Khaled (known as DJ Khaled) and professional boxer Floyd Mayweather ...

Tags: ICO, SEC

Earlier this week, SEC Enforcement staff lost a bid for a preliminary injunction against a prospective ICO in its pre-offering testing phase.

Blockvest was preparing for an ICO of "BLV" tokens. Its website touted the endeavor as the "first licensed and regulated tokenized cryptocurrency exchange and index fund based in the United States," and showed pictures of the seals of the SEC, CFTC, NFA, and others. It also claimed to be regulated by the fictitious "BEC" (Blockchain Exchange Commission), which not coincidentally appeared to share the same Washington address as the SEC.

So how ...

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 ...

Last Friday, November 16, the SEC issued a pair of settled actions setting a de facto standard of compliance for unregistered ICOs wanting to "come in from the cold." In each of them, the ICO offeror paid a $250,000 monetary penalty, registered its ICO as security, and entered a rescission undertaking respecting all tokens issued to date.

The first was a settled action by Paragon Coin - a digital token ("PRG") unregistered offeror in the cannabis industry. Paragon agreed to cease and desist, file a registration statement, and publicly offer rescission of the ICO. The Commission cited ...

On November 8, the SEC filed its first settled enforcement action against a cryptocurrency trading platform for operating as an unregistered exchange trading securities, in violation of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

"EtherDelta" was a platform offering matched-book secondary market trading of ERC-20 tokens, many of which had issued in unregistered initial-coin-offerings ("ICOs") having attributes of "securities" under the Howey investment-contract analysis. The Howey test was applied by the SEC in its July 2017 Section 21A Report, The DAO, to conclude that digital ...

Posted in: Cryptocurrency, SEC

Burr & Forman was a sponsor at the recent Distributed Health conference held in Nashville, Tennessee, with members of the firm's Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and E-Transactions team participating as speakers and attendees. The conference featured presentations and panel discussions from innovators and thought leaders, ranging from payers and providers to pharmaceutical manufacturers and policymakers. This fostered a collaborative forum for stakeholders in the healthcare and blockchain space.

Matt Kroplin, a partner in Burr's Nashville office, spoke on a panel about the ...

On October 25, 2018, the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's (OCC) creation of a new national bank charter for nonbank companies, which would include FinTech companies (the Nonbank Charter Program). See Conference of State Bank Supervisors v. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Case 1:18-cv-02449-DLF (D.D.C. Oct. 25, 2018).

In the complaint, the CSBS alleges that nonbank institutions-including FinTech companies-have been subject to ...

Posted in: Blockchain, CSBS, FinTech
Tags: CSBS, FinTech

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 ...

On October 3, 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Blockvest LLC and its founder Reginald Buddy Ringgold, III for falsely claiming that its initial coin offering had been approved by the SEC. The complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, Case No. 18-CV-2287-GPC, sought a return of improperly obtained funds as well as a temporary restraining order to "halt the fraudulent offer and sale of unregistered securities" by Blockvest and to freeze the assets of both Blockvest and Ringgold.

The SEC's complaint alleges that ...

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