Tagged: perspective

November 9, 2018 @ 10:44 am By JD Alois  |  

Earlier this week it was revealed that RealtyShares, a respected real estate crowdfunding platform that has originated just under $900 million in investment capital, was winding down operations. The turn of events was driven by the lack of available risk capital to keep the real… Read More

November 9, 2018 @ 8:35 am By JD Alois  |  

It has been a few choppy weeks in Germany for the blockchain / digital asset industry. Last month, a German court ruled that Bitcoin was not a financial instrument. The case centered around an enterprising teenager who launched a Bitcoin exchange five years ago. He was… Read More

November 8, 2018 @ 3:27 pm By JD Alois  |  

Today, the first enforcement action was taken by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against a cryptocurrency exchange; EtherDelta. Prior to this, the SEC had only targeted issuers and promoters of crypto – largely for fraud and selling unregistered securities.  While the action against EtherData is… Read More

November 7, 2018 @ 11:00 am By JD Alois  |  

Yesterday, mid-term elections took place in the US and while the Republicans maintained control of the Senate, the House of Representatives moved over to the Democrats. This split government means that an already divisive, and at times excessively acrimonious, political environment will get even more… Read More

November 7, 2018 @ 10:17 am By JD Alois  |  

Recently, at the StartEngine Summit during LA Blockchain Week, CI had the chance to sit down with prominent securities attorney Linda Lerner. Lerner is Senior Counsel at Crowell Moring and a veteran lawyer with deep experience and expertise in securities issuance and regulation of stock exchanges…. Read More

November 1, 2018 @ 4:00 pm By JD Alois  |  

UK Unicorns Monzo, BrewDog & Revolut are Crowdcube Alumni UK’s largest investment crowdfunding platform by volume Crowdcube has now helped to raise capital for three separate unicorns aka firms that have attained a valuation of $ 1 billion or more. Crowdcube pointed to this fact… Read More

October 31, 2018 @ 3:31 pm By Collins Brown  |  

A lot of people think of their cryptocurrency wallet as merely a digitized version of a real wallet that is used for storing funds. However, it doesn’t actually store cryptocurrencies. Rather, it saves a pair of public and private keys that grant access to one’s digital belongings. In a nutshell, a public key is a… Read More

October 31, 2018 @ 2:31 pm By Aubrey Hansen  |  

It’s a tale woven from the stuff legends are made of: In the midst of global financial chaos, corrupt bailouts of the super rich, and growing mistrust in institutions, a mysterious figure arrives out of nowhere to save day. In a nine-page short document, an… Read More

October 31, 2018 @ 9:45 am By JD Alois  |  

The one crypto to rule them all, Bitcoin, is celebrating a birthday. The creation of Satoshi Nakamoto (whomever he or she really is), Bitcoin has become an iconic concept in global Fintech and the emerging world of digital assets. Starting as a novelty in 2008,… Read More

October 30, 2018 @ 12:00 pm By Samuel Guzik  |  

As a securities attorney, when I attend a conference in a rapidly developing area, I come with my own prejudices and beliefs, but with an open mind and open ears – to hear,  digest and discuss the latest developments and thinking.  The 2018 Crypto Invest… Read More

October 28, 2018 @ 4:50 pm By JD Alois  |  

CI reported last month that the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) was considering filing a lawsuit against the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). Once again, the CSBS mission is a legal challenge to the much debated OCC Fintech Charter. Last week, the… Read More

October 28, 2018 @ 9:42 am By Aubrey Hansen   |  

Content created from out of game tools can be the most inventive and powerful ways to change a gaming experience. The introduction of a decentralized gaming ecosystem offers unfettered freedom to communities in developing such content for their favourite games. Old school gamers – yes,… Read More

October 26, 2018 @ 4:57 pm By JD Alois  |  

The much heralded JOBS Act was signed into law in 2012 during a brief moment of bi-partisan cooperation. The objective was to drive economic growth, and job creation, via a series of regulatory updates including the legalization of investment crowdfunding. But has the JOBS Act… Read More

October 25, 2018 @ 2:54 pm By Ștefan Neagu  |  

Background checks are broken. They’re necessary, especially when verifying personnel for sensitive positions, but right now, the system is broken. It’s a really lucrative business if you’re a background check company, because the system is great at exploiting companies checking applicants and creating more work… Read More

October 23, 2018 @ 12:00 pm By JD Alois  |  

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) hit the popular media screen during 2017 with stories of outrageous sums of money being raised online – sometimes under questionable circumstances. In total, according to EY, $4.1 billion was raised for the top ICOs during 2017. In 2018, that number… Read More

October 21, 2018 @ 11:00 am By Max Lyadvinsky  |  

The blockchain has revolutionized a number of industries, but none so much as the financial sector. From equity crowdfunding platforms which allow users to buy shares in projects with tokens, to startups raising funds through initial coin offerings (ICOs), to token exchanges where users can… Read More

October 20, 2018 @ 6:54 pm By JD Alois  |  

Lawless, ill-conceived, and destabilizing of financial markets. While most level headed individuals will have the opinion this statement best describes the New York Department of Financial Services (NY DFS) and their anti-Fintech point of view, think again. This is how the DFS describes the Office… Read More

October 19, 2018 @ 11:17 am By Aubrey Hansen   |  

The European Union does not need to seek out any problems for the moment, with the highly publicized ‘divorce’ from the UK taking place in the full media spotlight, but it’s easy to forget that, as things stand, the EU is also taking its approach… Read More

October 16, 2018 @ 1:31 pm By Cali Haan  |  

A Stanford-trained Brazilian professor of computer science has left several of the sacred cows of Bitcoin wounded in the field after submitting a systematic take down of several of the coin’s tropes to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In early July, the SEC… Read More

October 11, 2018 @ 8:05 pm By JD Alois  |  

This morning, well known economist Dr. Nouriel Roubini and Peter Van Valkenburg, Director of Research at Coin Center testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. The topic of discussion was cryptocurrency and the emerging blockchain technology. Roubini attacked and Van… Read More