ICOs: The Tech and Legal Angles

Heading to Murphy's Pub after the event for drinks and networking. 217 Kearny St

Heading to Murphy's Pub after the event for drinks and networking. 217 Kearny St

Heading to Murphy's Pub after the event for drinks and networking. 217 Kearny St

Heading to Murphy's Pub after the event for drinks and networking. 217 Kearny St

Here is the link to stream the event https://youtu.be/bUYANmIxDJU and will post a link to the recording after. We may be over capacity and have a long waitlist.

In 2017 numerous projects have raised $10 million+ in minutes using blockchain token raises (aka an initial coin offering or ICO). Recent successful token raises included Lunyr, Basic Attention Token (BAT), Gnosis prediction market, Storj, Brave browser, and many more.

Meanwhile controversy rages around the distinction between blockchain securities and work tokens, what legal jurisdictions apply, and the investor diligence and disclosures that should be required. What are the legal challenges? How will this model impact traditional investors? What are the technical requirements? Do I have to move to Switzerland to start a Stiftung foundation? Blockchain tokens?!

Join us for a panel discussion with folks who are part of this exciting emerging techno-legal space.

Panelists & Speakers:

Arnold Pham - Cofounder CEO of Lunyr, a decentralized knowledge base built on Ethereum. Lunyr launched a crowdsale in March and successfully obtained $3.2M in Ether. Besides working on Lunyr, Arnold also teaches decentralized application development at the Ethereum Developer's Community meetup in Silicon Valley.

Reuben Bramanathan - Product Counsel at Coinbase. Reuben wrote and lectured the world's first postgraduate course on the Regulation of Digital Currency, and co-authored The Blockchain Token Securities Law Framework. He has been advising clients in the blockchain space since 2014, and regularly delivers presentations on the regulatory and policy challenges of blockchain technology.

Toni Lane Casserly is an artrepreneur in the Digital Currency and Blockchain Industry who co-founded CoinTelegraph and the virtual blockchain nation, BitNation. She has been affectionately entitled, “The Joan of Arc of Blockchain” and “Young Star of Bitcoin” by her peers and various publications. Miss Lane ​serves as an advisor to several notable companies, funds and family offices, including, but not limited to: SingularityU, Factom, The United Nations, Lykke, HSBC, Bosch, Cisco, P&G, Institute for the Future and St. Gallen Symposium.

Matt Corva runs legal at ConsenSys, a growing venture production studio with over 200 employees globally. ConsenSys works directly with corporations and nation states to deliver blockchain solutions based on both public and private Ethereum implementations. In addition, ConsenSys incubates many “spoke” projects that are focused on building the emerging decentralized world, including MetaMask, Truffle, Infura, Gnosis, uPort and ujo Music. ConsenSys is also a founding member of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance.

Erik Syvertsen is General Counsel at AngelList, where he works on fundraising products including the launch of CoinList. Erik is particularly focused on the securities law and regulatory aspects of token launches. Before joining AngelList, Erik was a partner at Olshan in NYC, where he led the venture capital practice.

Arthur Breitman - CTO Tezos

Here's some reading to give you context:

Securities Law Framework For Blockchain Tokens (https://www.coinbase.com/legal/securities-law-framework.pdf)

"The Perfect Token Sale Structure" (https://blog.gdax.com/the-perfect-token-sale-structure-63c169789491) article by Reuben Bramanathan

We also will be hosting a hackathon for lawyers, smart contract developers, and collaborators on Saturday, July 15th on topics discussed at this event.

Much gratitude to our sponsor Digital Garage for hosting us!

Networking and drinks at Murphy's Pub after the event at 217 Kearny St.