January 16, 2018 @ 1:20 pm By Amy Wan  |  

Last week, on LinkedIn, I called out the North American Bitcoin Conference for having merely 1 female speaker, out of 85 male speakers, and for having their afterparty at what essentially is a strip club. All that, accompanied by event photos from last year’s conference,… Read More

December 6, 2017 @ 4:06 pm By Amy Wan  |  

In the early days of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), basically for much of this year, one of the keys of a successful ICO raise was ability to snag a crypto-influencer onto one’s advisory board – or to get them to be an early investor in… Read More

November 13, 2017 @ 3:00 pm By Amy Wan  |  

On Friday, November 10, 2017, StartEngine, a Regulation Crowdfunding platform based in Los Angeles, California organized ICO 2.0 Summit, the first regulated ICO conference – or at least the first that I’ve seen. While there seem to be an explosion of ICO and Blockchain-related conferences… Read More

August 4, 2017 @ 6:09 pm By Amy Wan  |  

  On Tuesday, July 25, the SEC announced that Initial Coin Offerings, also called Token Sales, in many cases may be considered securities. Of course, this probably terrifies a large amount of the ICO community. So how do you actually legally raise an ICO? Your… Read More

July 25, 2017 @ 7:03 pm By Amy Wan  |  

My Facebook Messenger was blowing up this afternoon. “OMG Have you seen this?” “What does this mean?” “Can you explain what this says in stupid people talk?” They were all referring to today’s SEC  announcement on ICOs. So, I’ll take 15 minutes from what was… Read More

April 24, 2017 @ 10:48 am By Amy Wan  |  

Victoria Silchenko called out crowdfunding industry professionals earlier this year for not having invested in crowdfunding companies themselves. So, in that same spirit, I’m opening up my crowdfunding portfolio. Before I disclose, I’m going to say that I am NOT a financial advisor or any… Read More

March 28, 2017 @ 12:30 pm By Amy Wan  |  

So, you want to start a real estate crowdfunding (RECF) platform. This article is intended to serve as a basic guide to launching a real estate crowdfunding platform in the United States. Decide on what you want to do There are many different types of… Read More

March 20, 2017 @ 11:47 am By Amy Wan  |  

On Monday, March 6, 2017, Congressman Patrick McHenry gave keynote remarks at the Lendit Conference in New York City. Among the themes of his speech, McHenry talked about the need for financial inclusion, citing a statistic that counties with less than 100,000 in population saw… Read More

March 6, 2017 @ 10:20 am By Amy Wan  |  

It seems that at least once a week nowadays, I get a call asking whether an initial coin offering (ICO) is regulated at all, and the question came to a head at a recent Legal Hackers LA discussion on smart contracts by Daniel Rice. The… Read More

February 5, 2017 @ 9:31 am By Amy Wan  |  

Since Reg CF became effective, I’ve noticed a disturbing pattern in Reg CF deals—their valuations and economic terms are oftentimes unjustified. Unlike a normal angel or VC investment, which includes back and forth negotiations on terms with a lead investor, Reg CF issuers largely set… Read More

December 8, 2016 @ 3:00 pm By Amy Wan  |  

Crowdfunding campaigns tend to look like sexy, overnight successes, but rarely are the successful ones so effortless. What I’m about to say sounds dumb—so dumb that I’m reluctant to have to even say it—but a lot of folks contact me thinking that crowdfunding is easy,… Read More

November 10, 2016 @ 11:30 am By Amy Wan  |  

Many people feel deeply hurt from the outcome of the Presidential election. Here’s a kinder, simpler explanation as to why. This week, we saw a completely unexpected outcome in the Presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. As the punditry and chattering classes scramble… Read More

September 23, 2016 @ 5:34 pm By Amy Wan  |  

FinovateFall celebrated its 10th anniversary this last week with a two-day show on September 8-9, 2016 in New York City. The show featured demos from 72 companies presenting a diverse range of Fintech startups. In total, Finovate’s 30 events over 10 years have seen more… Read More

September 19, 2016 @ 6:00 am By Amy Wan  |  

First off, don’t panic. We’re not talking about hacking into computer networks or anything. Legal hacking, or hacking the law, doesn’t involve anything surreptitious. From an organization standpoint, Legal Hackers is an organization originating from Brooklyn Law School and now a global movement with over… Read More

August 14, 2016 @ 7:31 pm By Amy Wan  |  

Within its first three months, Regulation Crowdfunding investor commitments for campaigns that have met their minimum funding goals have surpassed $5 million, as reported by NextGen Crowdfunding. Regulation Crowdfunding, also known as Title III or Reg CF for short, enables companies to raise up to… Read More

August 1, 2016 @ 11:15 am By Amy Wan  |  

Syndication and crowdfunding are terms that have been used interchangeably within the last decade, and their concepts and meaning have become increasingly blurred. However, whereas syndication focuses on funding relationships and structure between the funder and funded, crowdfunding is a method of finding investors (or… Read More

July 11, 2016 @ 10:29 am By Amy Wan  |  

Regulation A+, which revamped the old Regulation A, became effective on June 19, 2015—just over a year ago. Here’s what we’ve seen during the past year of utilization: Statistics: Approximately 105 publicly-filed Regulation A+ filings to date, with approximately 44 of those filings qualified by… Read More