Litigation and Decisions

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Perkins Coie LLP is pleased to bring you this Digital Asset SEC Timeline. This Timeline is an interactive compilation of select SEC guidance, enforcement actions, and speeches relating to the application of the federal securities laws to digital assets. Beginning with the release of the DAO Investigative Report in July 2017, the Timeline includes…

Through their recent actions and statements, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has further clarified their position with respect to digital assets and ICOs. Following on from earlier enforcement efforts throughout 2017 and 2018, the SEC Enforcement Division settled cases with AirFox and Paragon, two issuers of unregistered securities in tokenized form, in addition to…

On June 27, 2018, the Chinese Hangzhou Internet Court announced its decision on a case regarding the infringement of the right of communication through an information network. In a first for Chinese courts, the court accepted electronic data that was stored using blockchain technology as legal evidence. The court also clarified the examination standards for such electronic data.
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Federal District Court Upholds Securities Indictment for ICOs but Defers Final Howey Determination in United States v. Zaslavskiy

This week, liberal pleading standards were applied to uphold the indictment in United States v. Zaslavskiy, the first criminal case examining whether ICOs are securities under U.S. law.…
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On August 7, Judge Richard Seeborg of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California denied in part a motion to dismiss (the “Order”) sought by the defendants in In Re Tezos Securities Litigation (the “Tezos Case”). Among other important insights, the Order’s reasoning illustrates the potentially broad reach of the U.S. federal securities laws to blockchain token sellers outside the United States.…
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On July 26, 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC” or “Commission”) issued an order, by a 3-1 vote, disapproving a proposed rule change (the “Proposal”) that would have allowed for a bitcoin exchange-traded product (“ETP”) (the “Order”).  In the Order, the SEC re-asserted many of its prior concerns and reasons for denying the…

On July 26, 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC” or “Commission”) issued an order disapproving a proposed rule change that would have allowed for a bitcoin exchange-traded product (“ETP”) (the “Order”).  However, the Order was not unanimous amongst the SEC’s Commissioners.  Commissioner Hester M. Peirce issued a stand-alone dissent against the Order, arguing…

This week, at the tail-end of the legislative session, California legislators have introduced a bill (amended from a bill originally introduced in April 2015) that statutorily addresses the increasingly topical question of how to regulate the emerging crypto-currency market.

The amendment, introduced on August 8, 2016, is a vast departure from the earlier iterations of…