The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has published draft guidance for market players in the developing cryptoassets sector (see CP19/3). This follows a report published last autumn by the UK’s Cryptoasset Taskforce (consisting of the FCA, PRA and Treasury) that explores the UK’s approach to cryptoassets and distributed ledger technology. The FCA has been a relatively late mover in producing practical guidance on crypto compared to other regulators internationally, but was it worth the wait? The…
On November 27, 2018, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California issued a decision that is already being reported as one holding that a token is not a “security.” That is incorrect. The court left for another day the issue of whether the token in question meets the securities law definition of a “security.” It merely held that, for purposes of the request for a preliminary injunction, the court could not conclude that…
OpenFinance announced earlier this week that it had launched the first US-based regulated security token trading platform. As has been discussed previously in this blog, although the U.S. SEC has not taken the position that every token sale and ICO qualifies as a security and must therefore be registered or fall under a recognized exemption, the SEC has taken actions and made statements that lead many to conclude that there is certainly risk in doing…