Bill Richards is an attorney and partner at Richards & Moskowitz PLC, a boutique Arizona firm serving the civil litigation needs of business, government and individuals. Through nearly three decades of trial practice, Bill has developed an expertise in successfully managing the most complex litigation matters. In private practice, he has represented global banking institutions, government bodies, judges, multibillion-dollar investment firms, as well as victims of consumer fraud and civil rig...
Aug 08, 2022•1 hr 30 min
Kelsie Nabben (@ kelsiemvn ) is a researcher of decentralized technology communities. As an ethnographic researcher, she is interested in the human outcomes of digital infrastructure, blockchain community culture, and algorithmic governance. Kelsie is also a recipient of a PhD scholarship at the RMIT University Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society, a Fellow at the DAO Research Collective, and a researcher in the Digital Ethnography Research Centre and Blockchain Innov...
Aug 06, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Mike Wawszczak (@ dotwavsz ) is General Counsel at @alliancedao and a valuable contributor to the DAO ecosystem. Mike has written extensive twitter threads and insightful articles on all things DAOs. This conversation touches on the origins of Mt. Gox, philosophical issues with the current legal system, and the future of DAOs. Show highlights: [2:00] Magic the Gathering & Mt. Gox [7:00] Online Pseudonymity [11:00] Law & Economics [17:00] Enforcing the Law [23:00] Advice & Habits If y...
Aug 06, 2022•27 min•Ep. 55
John Deaton (@ JohnEDeaton1 ) is the Managing Partner of the Deaton Law Firm, a law practice he founded in 2006. John is also the founder of Crypto-Law.us, a Bitcoin, ETH, XRP and crypto enthusiast, and an entrepreneur. A former Marine-turned-class-action lawyer, John became interested in crypto in 2016, and eventually invested in Ripple coin, XRP. When the SEC sued Ripple over allegations that XRP was an unregistered security, John raised concerns about the agency’s case, which he didn’t think ...
Jul 11, 2022•1 hr 7 min
Adam Sternbach (@ adamsternbach ) is General Counsel at Fractional (@ fractional_art ), former Counsel to New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy (@ GovMurphy ) and a startup/VC attorney. This wide-ranging episode covers the BAYC, owning a valuable NFT, working as general counsel, and much more. Show highlights : [1:37] Buying & owning a Bored Ape [11:20] Explaining NFTs [21:00] Counsel for Governor Murphy [27:00] General counsel role [36:00] NFT legal considerations [41:00] Staying on top of crypto...
Jul 04, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Peter Van Valkenburgh (@valkenburgh) is the director of research for Coin Center , the leading non-profit focused on the policy issues facing cryptocurrencies. He was previously the Google Policy Fellow for TechFreedom and is a graduate of NYU School of Law, as well as a self-taught designer and coder. In this episode, we discuss Peter's role at Coin Center, the U.S. Constitution & Crypto, and the SEC's definition of an exchange. Show highlights : [1:10] Genesis block [9:20] Writing [13:50] ...
Jun 27, 2022•1 hr 7 min
Hester Peirce (@ HesterPeirce ) is a Commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. She previously served as the director of the Financial Markets Working Group at George Mason University's Mercatus Center. This episode covers almost every pressing issue in crypto law, as Commissioner Peirce shares her thoughts on stablecoin regulation, the future of the SEC, the fourth prong of Howey & much, much more. Show highlights: [1:50] Stablecoin regulation [6:10] Regulatory philosophy ...
Jun 20, 2022•50 min•Ep. 51
This conversation covers the latest Gitcoin funding round, along with the work of three prominent public goods orgs: The Blockchain Association, The DAO Research Collective, and the EU Crypto Initiative. Kristin Smith (@KMSmithDC) is the Executive Director at the Blockchain Association, where she leads the crypto industry’s development of a strategic roadmap for public policy. Connor Spelliscy (@c_spelliscy) runs the DAO Research Collective, which accelerates DAO functionality by procuring and o...
Jun 13, 2022•52 min•Ep. 49
Jordan Teague ( @jordanteague ) is an attorney and smart contract developer. In her crypto-native law practice, The Antifirm , she focuses on governance, regulatory, and other legal issues facing web3 organizations. Jordan is one of the core developers behind KaliDAO and a legal engineer with LexDAO. In this episode, we discuss all things DAOs - legislation, potential, and legal structuring, as well as Jordan's journey into legal engineering, and what the future legal system looks like. Show hig...
Jun 13, 2022•54 min•Ep. 50
Michael Mosier (@ M_Mosier ) is the General Counsel at ESPRESSO Systems , a scaling & privacy solution for Web3 applications. Michael was formerly the first in-house Counsel at cryptocurrency analytics and investigations firm Chainalysis. Michael was previously Acting Director, as well as permanent Deputy Director & Digital Innovation Officer of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the Treasury Department. As Acting Director, he oversaw FinCEN’s wide-ranging wor...
May 30, 2022•48 min
This episode reviews the IP ownership rights associated with Board Ape #8398, after actor and producer Seth Green (who licensed it for his series, White Horse Tavern) was scammed in a phishing attack. The stolen NFT was then sold to "DarkWing84" for $200,000. This episode is largely based on an enlightening thread by James Grimmelmann (@grimmelm), who dove deep into the issue, with additional notes from prominent crypto lawyers Drew Hinkes (@propelforward), Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky), Presto...
May 26, 2022•36 min•Ep. 47
Professor J.W. Verret (@ JWVerret ), teaches accounting and finance, securities law, M&A, corporate law and banking law at the George Mason University Law School. A Senior Advisor @messaricrypto, J.W. is a licensed CPA in the state of Virginia, is licensed in financial forensics by the AICPA, is a Certified Fraud Examiner and a Certified Valuation Analyst. He has been a Visiting Professor at Stanford Law School. J.W. served on the Investor Advisory Committee of the Securities and Exchange Co...
May 23, 2022•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 46
Marco Santori (@ msantoriESQ ) is the Chief Legal Officer of Kraken Digital Asset Exchange. Known as the "Dean of Digital Currency Lawyers," Marco is a recognized authority in the law and policy of blockchain technologies. Prior to his move to Kraken, Marco was the Chief Legal Officer of Blockchain.com, as well as a Partner at both Cooley LLP and Pillsbury Winthrop, where he counseled banks, broker-dealers, exchanges, digital wallets, payment providers, and other companies making new and excitin...
May 19, 2022•59 min
The Collapse of UST and LUNA - This was the most eventful week in many months, but, unfortunately, the end result was that $500 billion was wiped off the total cryptocurrency market cap. A calculated attack on UST triggered Terra's LUNA to crash more than 99% over the past few days. This caused a corresponding fall and de-pegging in the price of UST, Terra's algorithmic, decentralized stablecoin. This episode offers a deep dive into the events behind the $500 billion+ loss of value in the crypto...
May 16, 2022•35 min•Ep. 44
Jesse Pollak (@ jessepollak ) currently works on protocols, public goods, cities, and currencies at Coinbase & beyond (more coming soon). He previously led all Retail engineering at Coinbase, including building Coinbase, Coinbase Pro, and Coinbase Wallet. Way back when, Jesse started Clef and was an engineer at BuzzFeed. He also writes open source software and takes incredible photos . You can find Jesse at jesse.xyz on ETH and on Twitter, Github , & LinkedIn . In this episode, we discus...
May 09, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 43
Laura Shin (@ laurashin ) is a crypto journalist, host of the Unchained podcast, and author of “The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze” (PublicAffairs, 2022). During the course of writing her book, she and her sources uncovered who they believe was behind the biggest whodunnit in crypto — the 2016 DAO attack on Ethereum. Formerly a senior editor at Forbes, she was the first mainstream journalist to cover crypto full-time, and her podcasts and...
May 06, 2022•1 hr 26 min
Ben Samaroo (@ BenSamaroo ) is CEO/Co-Founder at WonderFi Technologies Inc, one of the largest players in the Canadian crypto space. Ben began building WonderFi with the mission of lowering barriers to entry to crypto and decentralized finance in support of a more equitable financial system. Previously, Ben was an executive and regulatory consultant with broad experience in managing corporate finance, risk and compliance on behalf of Fintech companies. He previously served as Regulatory Consulta...
May 02, 2022•56 min
(April 28) This episode is an overview of the legal landscape for digital assets, outlining the implications, pertinent news, and updates in the crypto law space from the past week. It is a collaboration between the Law of Code Podcast and the CryptoLaw Newsletter, by Ann Sofie Cloots. This will be a weekly installment to ensure you're up to date on the regulations impacting digital assets. This "solo-pod" is an attempt to add value to the space by highlighting ongoing blockchain regulation acro...
Apr 28, 2022•29 min
Stepan Simkin (@SimkinStepan) is the co-founder and CEO of Squads (https://squads.so/) and a former attorney at the international law firm Clifford Chance LLP. Squads raised millions to build DAO tooling for the Solana ecosystem. Squads' goal is to simplify the DAO framework and make it accessible to the majority of users who are familiar with web3 or are just discovering it. By combining the core DAO primitives under one platform and building it on a fast and scalable layer 1 blockchain like So...
Apr 25, 2022•53 min
Miles Jennings (@ milesjennings ) is the general counsel of a16z crypto, where he oversees the firm's investments, works on regulatory and policy matters, and works with the firm's portfolio companies and DAOs on decentralized operations, protocol design and regulatory matters. Miles was previously a partner at Latham & Watkins in its capital markets and emerging companies group, and co-chaired its global blockchain and cryptocurrency task force, which was composed of over 80 lawyers around ...
Apr 22, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 38
(April 8-14) This episode is an overview of the legal landscape for digital assets, outlining the implications, pertinent news, and updates in the crypto law space from the past week. It is a collaboration between the Law of Code Podcast and the CryptoLaw Newsletter, by Ann Sofie Cloots. This will be a weekly installment to ensure you're up to date on the regulations impacting digital assets. This "solo-pod" is an attempt to add value to the space by highlighting ongoing blockchain regulation ac...
Apr 14, 2022•8 min•Ep. 37
(April 1-7) This episode is an overview of the legal landscape for digital assets, outlining the implications, pertinent news, and updates in the crypto law space from the past week. It is a collaboration between the Law of Code Podcast and the CryptoLaw Newsletter, by Ann Sofie Cloots. This will be a weekly installment to ensure you're up to date on the regulations impacting digital assets. This "solo-pod" is an attempt to add value to the space by highlighting ongoing blockchain regulation acr...
Apr 07, 2022•11 min
Lana Schwartzman (@ LanaCryptoAML ) is the Chief Compliance Officer at Dapper Labs, the team behind NBA Top Shots, NFL All Day, and Cryptokitties. Lana has more than 17 years of experience specializing in compliance, cryptocurrency regulations, and AML. Specifically, in BSA/AML/OFAC program development, MSB/MTL licensure process, internal audits, independent compliance program reviews, and consent order validation for various cryptocurrency exchange companies, financial institutions, and foreign...
Apr 06, 2022•51 min•Ep. 35
David Kerr (@ David_M_Kerr ) is the Principal of Cowrie LLC, where he uses ten years of experience in tax strategy, financial accounting, and risk advisory in the industries of gaming, telecommunications, and technology-driven online sales platforms to assist clients. David co-authored " A Legal Framework for Decentralization Autonomous Organizations " together with Miles Jennings. This paper identified a number of taxation, entity formation, and operational issues pertaining to DAOs and suggest...
Apr 01, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 34
(March 24-31) This episode is an overview of the legal landscape for digital assets, outlining the implications, pertinent news, and updates in the crypto law space from the past week. It is a collaboration between the Law of Code Podcast and the CryptoLaw Newsletter, by Ann Sofie Cloots. This will be a weekly installment to ensure you're up to date on the regulations impacting digital assets. This "solo-pod" is an attempt to add value to the space by highlighting ongoing blockchain regulation a...
Mar 31, 2022•14 min•Ep. 33
This episode is an overview of the legal landscape for digital assets, outlining the implications, pertinent news, and updates in the crypto law space from the past week. It is a collaboration between the Law of Code Podcast and the CryptoLaw Newsletter , by Ann Sofie Cloots. Moving forward, this will be a weekly installment to ensure you're up to date on the regulations impacting digital assets. This "solo-pod" is an attempt to add value to the space by highlighting ongoing blockchain regulatio...
Mar 24, 2022•13 min
Last week, the @WhiteHouse released its long-anticipated Executive Order on cryptocurrencies, marking the first time t his administration explicitly highlighted the need to preserve innovation and competitiveness in the US. This Executive Order lays out a process for multiple agencies to write a framework around digital assets. This episode is an overview of the Executive Order, outlining the implications, pertinent sections, and reactions from thought leaders in the cryptolaw space. Here are li...
Mar 21, 2022•28 min
Ross Campbell (@ r_ross_campbell ) is a legal engineer and core developer for SushiSwap, LexDAO, and KaliDAO, in addition to being a corporate attorney. In this episode of Law of Code, Ross speaks from his ETH Denver hotel room on legal engineering with the Lex and Kali DAOs, how projects can work with both, and the impact of decentralization on nations. Listen and subscribe to Law of Code for weekly updates and interviews in the world of blockchain at the intersection of the law. [2:14] Ross ca...
Mar 17, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 30
Bennett Tomlin (@ BennettTomlin ) is the co-host of the podcast Crypto Critics’ Corner , where he breaks down current events in crypto & finance. He is a data scientist who loves to analyze and track down frauds. Bennett also writes a newsletter, the Facts Under Dispute (FUD) Letter , which takes a deep dive into the darkest corners of crypto on a monthly basis. Bennett is a vocal & endearing critic of DeFi, and offers unique and refreshing insight while keeping a close eye on the larges...
Mar 02, 2022•58 min•Ep. 30
Stephen D. Palley (@stephendpalley) is a Partner in the Washington, D.C office of Anderson Kill, where he chairs the Technology, Media & Distributed Systems practice group. Stephen has written extensively and been quoted widely on legal issues arising from the use of blockchain technology, with appearances in both print and television media. He is also an editor of the International Journal of Blockchain Law (IJBL), a law journal helping non-legal communities better understand blockchain app...
Feb 25, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 28
