COVID-19: Legal Considerations for Startups and Fintech Companies
The current global pandemic raises a number of potential legal issues for businesses of all sizes. We list below the most relevant concerns we expect to see for startups and financial technology companies, to help isolate issues during the crisis so companies can resolve them one by one. We also outline special concerns for companies facing consumers and those offering regulated financial services in New York State.
Hindsight from 2020: Notable Regulatory Events for Blockchain in 2019
Ketsal’s team of lawyers put our heads together in early January to reflect on the prior year and what it means for the one to come. Regulators really did step it up this year. There’s a lot to digest.
The Reg A Gambit
The term “decentralization” can mean many things to many people. For securities lawyers, the subsets of architectural decentralization and political decentralization (distinguished in this article) carry the most weight. Essentially, is the network built so that no small group of nodes can shut it down? Is it built so that no small group of individuals has control over key governance decisions?
“I want New York to win” — Assemblyman Clyde Vanel
On May 14, 2019, we had the honor to host New York State Assemblyman Clyde Vanel and State Senator James Sanders Jr. during Blockchain Week in New York City.
![How We [sic] Failed and Could Do Better](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62bdea2faf413c5a8cc725c7/1680818609643-6G93VCS4MIMJIHS4HP0M/Screen+Shot+2023-04-06+at+6.03.25+PM.png)
How We [sic] Failed and Could Do Better
Securities law practitioners learn early that there is a distinction between a “security” and a “transaction in a security.” In fact, the first substantive thing the Securities Act of 1933 does is define the term “security” before going on to describe how it regulates the offer and sale of (i.e., transactions in) securities.
Howey, Staking as a Service, and Technological Nuance
Innovations in blockchain often act as a building block for new businesses. Consider the original innovation, Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus mechanism: a new business model sprang up to take advantage of the opportunity to pool processing power to generate revenue in the form of bitcoin rewards.