Venture Capital and Investments

Cryptocurrency owners must face death—be it their own, or that of anyone else with custody of the owner’s cryptocurrency or other digital assets. We received a stark reminder of this when the Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX recently filed court papers[1] indicating it may have lost access to nearly $200 million USD of its customers’ Bitcoin, Ether and other cryptocurrencies. The exchange claimed to have used cold wallets to store its portion of customers’ vital cryptocurrency offline. After the owner of the exchange died, however, the exchange has apparently struggled to access this cryptocurrency and related fiat deposits, and customers may forever lose their assets housed on the exchange.[2]
Continue Reading Dying and Private Keys

Why Blockchain Custody Is So Difficult—A Hard Part” was recently posted on Perkins Coie’s Asset Management ADVocate blog. The blog post continues the analysis of the difficult question of how to comply with regulations requiring independent custody of cryptocurrency. This series focuses on the custody requirements for registered investment companies in an attempt

Why Blockchain Custody Is So Difficult—The Simple Part” was recently posted on Perkins Coie’s Asset Management ADVocate blog. The post begins with an analysis of the difficult question of how to comply with regulations requiring independent custody of cryptocurrency. This series will focus on the custody requirements for registered investment companies in an

We recently represented Andreessen Horowitz as lead investor in a $25 Million Series B financing for Coinbase. This represents the largest investment to date in a Bitcoin company and is also significant in that Andreessen Horowitz is among a handful of the most elite VCs in the market. This bodes well for the future of the Bitcoin community and indicates we are near a tipping point where others will start to discover how mainstream Bitcoin has become just over the last several months.
Continue Reading Bitcoin Tipping Point