Daily Compliance News: March 28, 2025, The Cave or Go To Trial Edition
ABA Sound Advice: Conducting Civil Rights Audits: Benefits and Best Practices
The Justice Insiders: The Administrative State is Not Your Friend - A Conversation with Professor Richard Epstein
Litigation developments: federal forum provisions
The "Compass Rose" Method for Corporate Witness Interviews
Investment Management and Private Funds Roundtable: TALF 2020 and PPP Update
Securities Litigation and Disclosure Issues
Investment Management Roundtable Discussion – Regulatory and Enforcement Update
Podcast: Non-binding Guidance: SEC Disclosure Issues for Life Sciences Companies
Life Sciences Quarterly (Q3 2019): SEC Enforcement and Class Actions Regarding FDA Communications
Podcast: Credit Funds: What Managers Need to Know and Practical Tips to Avoid Insider Trading Risks
Key Points - - The SEC’s Crypto Task Force acknowledges past hostility toward digital assets and aims to create more sensible regulations. - Tokenized securities face complex regulatory challenges, including compliance...more
A class action lawsuit brought against online gaming company DraftKings Inc. relating to the company’s short-lived marketplace for non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, is likely to settle. Because the case will not proceed to a...more
On February 21, 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced it was dropping its case against Coinbase. In 2023, the SEC sued Coinbase for operating an unregistered exchange that sold unregistered securities....more
On January 16 and January 30, two related class actions were filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York against Baton Corporation LTD (Pump.Fun) and its founders. The complaints allege that Pump.Fun...more
In early January, Coinbase achieved a partial victory in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Thus, there is hope among crypto companies that the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) will provide guidelines for...more
The rise of cryptocurrency has introduced new complexities to both traditional litigation and bankruptcy courts. While these two legal arenas share some overlap, the treatment of cryptocurrency in each context is distinct,...more
The inauguration of President Donald J. Trump has been widely celebrated as the dawn of the first pro-crypto presidential administration – a dramatic shift from the Biden administration’s antagonistic stance on crypto. But...more
On Jan. 13, 2025, a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC or the Commission) violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) when it offered...more
There has rarely been a larger or more widely distributed financial market that existed in a more uncertain regulatory context than cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance (DeFi) at the start of 2025. In the past several...more
The see-saw court battle over whether Coinbase is an unregistered securities exchange/broker-dealer/clearing agency has flipped, this time with the SEC dropping low. On January 7, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the...more
The legal landscape surrounding blockchain technology underwent dramatic shifts in 2024, particularly in the United States, offering both remarkable opportunities and substantial compliance challenges. Governments introduced...more
This year, the SEC has ramped up its enforcement efforts against digital asset marketplaces for selling non-fungible tokens (“NFTs”) (and other digital assets) the agency alleges are securities. In response, some potential...more
Key Points - - During its 2024 term, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to provide important guidance on the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act’s (PSLRA’s) particularity requirement in NVIDIA Corp. v. E. Ohman J:or...more
On October 15, 2024, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed a decision by the United States District Court for the District of Utah granting a motion to dismiss a putative...more
As Congress is on its August recess, litigation over digital asset issues continued with major developments in the Yuga Labs trademark case and the SEC cases against Kraken and Consensys. While these matters all involve...more
On August 7, 2024, a digital asset infrastructure company (the “Company”) was ordered to pay a $125 million civil penalty for its failure to register institutional sales of its XRP token with the Securities and Exchange...more
The SEC’s litigation against the largest digital asset exchanges in America has been unfolding for over a year, beginning with the agency suing various Binance entities in June 2023, followed by actions against Coinbase...more
Securities litigation arising from the purchase or sale of digital products such as cryptocurrencies, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and security tokens has proliferated in recent years. A gating question in these cases is whether...more
Our last update included a whirlwind of activities, with the surprisingly bipartisan House of Representatives vote on FIT 21 and the SEC’s approval of certain Ether spot ETF rule change proposals coming in quick succession....more
On April 5, 2024, a jury in the Southern District of New York found cryptocurrency startup Terraform Labs PTE Ltd. (the “Company”) and its co-founder, Do Kwon, liable for securities fraud. The jury sided with the SEC in...more
CryptoLink is a compilation of news stories published by outside organizations. Akin aggregates the stories, but the information contained in them does not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of the firm. Akin's...more
Securities Class Actions Show No Signs of Slowing in 2024 - Key Points - While the volume of securities class actions filings has remained consistently elevated over the past several years, the composition of the class...more
Cryptocurrency enforcement continues to be a high priority for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In 2023, the SEC administration under Chair Gary Gensler brought a total of 46 cryptocurrency-related...more
SEC Wins Summary Judgment on Howey Issue in Terraform Litigation - On December 28, 2023, Judge Jed Rakoff in the Southern District of New York issued a summary judgment decision in SEC v. Terraform Labs Pte. Ltd., a...more
Since the first action in July 2013, the SEC has brought a total of 173 cryptocurrency-related enforcement actions as of December 31, 2023, comprising: 108 litigations, and - 65 administrative proceedings....more