Update On What's Happening In Crypto... our man on the ground
- Thread starter Scataphagos
- Start date
on the ground, or under it ?
As always. The lawyers get the lion's share. I get a check from the class action for $1.33. It's disclosed that the lawyers got $65 Million to get me that $1.33.
Thank Gawd for justice. That's what makes America, "America"!!
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Crypto Lawsuit Deluge Has Big Firms Scrambling to Keep Up
Crypto Lawsuit Deluge Has Big Firms Scrambling to Keep Up
May 17, 2022, 4:30 AM
Half of all crypto litigation are class actions or private suits, according to the firm’s data.
PODCAST:Listen to Sam talk more about this story on our weekly legal news podcast
“There’s been a steady stream of cases from regulators, but what’s really exploded is private litigation,” said Jason Gottlieb, chair of Morrison Cohen’s white collar and regulatory enforcement practice group in New York.
The rise in litigation is encouraging Big Law operations to bolster their crypto practices. Firms including Jenner & Block, Goodwin Procter, and Morrison & Foerster in the last few months have added new crypto partners to their rosters, including former fraud prosecutors, securities litigators and investment funds lawyers.
The litigation growth comes at a tumultuous time for crypto. A backer of the collapsed TerraUSD stablecoin lost $3 billion in cryptocurrency reserves in a failed effort to restore its peg to the dollar, Bloomberg News reported Monday. Bitcoin on May 12 hit its lowest level since 2020 and was down 50% from its November high, according to Bloomberg.
Perkins Coie has so much activity on the crypto front that it holds weekly team calls, typically including 50 to 70 firm attorneys, said Joe Cutler, firmwide co-chair of the firm’s fintech industry group. “We have content coming out of our ears,” he said.
At Latham & Watkins, more than 700 lawyers worked on crypto or blockchain issues in 2021 alone, said Yvette Valdez, co-chair of the firm’s global digital assets and Web3 practice.
“The market is exploding, not just at the partner level but at the associate level too,” Valdez said.
The result is a buyer’s market for lawyers, as firms see colleagues leave for general counsel positions at crypto companies, said Joshua Ashley Klayman, U.S. head of fintech and head of blockchain and digital assets for Linklaters in New York.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, Binance Holdings Ltd., is looking to hire more than 30 lawyers, Bloomberg Law reported Monday. Another cryptocurrency exchange, Bittrex Global GmbH, hired a Shearman & Sterling senior associate late last year to be its general counsel.
“There’s seemingly a fire hose of work that could, and does, come in,” Klayman said.
Crypto Rules
New US government crypto polices in progress promise even more work for firms.
US lawmakers, including Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey, top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, are proposing legislation. Toomey last month released a draft proposal to set new rules for stablecoins, Bloomberg News reported.
Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Ross Behnam said last week that federal regulators are considering steps they can take if Congress fails to act. US Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler has said he believes most digital assets are subject to his rules and that he’s beefing up enforcement.
Upcoming rules are “going to generate a ton of litigation,” said Mark Califano, a partner with Dentons and an independent director of the crypto exchange Bitstamp USA Inc.
The Lawsuits
The crypto lawsuits keeping firms busy touch on commercial matters, employment, and business failures that sometimes involve bankruptcies.
Celebrities, and even a famed French fashion house, became enmeshed in private legal actions.
Plaintiffs in early January filed a putative class action against Kim Kardashian, former boxing champ Floyd Mayweather Jr., and others in Heugerich v. Gentile. The suit alleges the defendants made false and misleading statements in social media posts to investors of the cryptocurrency token EthereumMax.
One week later, Hermes International, the Paris-based maker of scarves, women’s bags and other lifestyle accessories, sued Mason Rothschild in federal court in Manhattan. The suit alleges trademark infringement of the company’s Birkin bag trademarks.
The defendant allegedly created and sold METABIRKINS NFTs, short for “non-fungible tokens,” or non-replicable, digital collectible items, in the augmented or virtual-reality “metaverse.”
Some of the suits involve initial coin offerings and questions over whether the bits are really unregistered securities offerings, Gottlieb said. The SEC is examining creators of NFTs and the exchanges where they trade to determine if some of the assets run afoul of agency rules, Bloomberg News reported in March.
WATCH: Tax Your Crypto and NFTs? Yes, the IRS Wants Its Cut
Crypto Practices
At most firms, crypto efforts are structured as interdisciplinary groups that involve partners—and increasingly, associates—from existing firm practices.
The lawyers working on crypto have specialties such as tax, banking, mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, data privacy, and patents and intellectual property.
Their efforts run the gamut from business formations and dissolutions, to regulatory work and litigation, Klayman said. Specific matters include everything from writing letters to the SEC to keeping clients aware of regulations and disputes, she said.
Firms try to make clients aware of how to get on the right side of regulations before the company is targeted, said Judie Rinearson, co-chair of the global fintech group at K&L Gates.
“It takes a special lawyer-client relationship to navigate regulations and laws that are a little gray or unclear,” Rinearson said. “You want to be the good guy in this.”
‘High-End Counsel’
Despite the recent downturn in crypto value, firms said they’re optimistic about the future of their practices, with new venture capital and private equity investments padding crypto companies.
“Money is still pouring into crypto,” Cutler said. Despite last week’s drops, “I’ve yet to get a panic call,” he said.
He termed crypto value declines as corrections that need to be put in perspective. “When people focus on days, weeks, or months, and not years, it’s easy for them to conclude it’s wildly volatile,” Cutler said. “But it’s not true.”
Andrew Ceresney, co-chair of Debevoise & Plimpton’s litigation department, said his firm sees no shortage of paying crypto clients.
“In the beginning, there weren’t many crypto companies that had the means to be able to afford us,” Ceresney said. “Now, more and more crypto companies are able to afford high-end legal counsel.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Sam Skolnik in Washington at sskolnik@bloomberglaw.com
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chris Opfer at copfer@bloomberglaw.com; John Hughes at jhughes@bloombergindustry.com
Crypto Lawsuit Deluge Has Big Firms Scrambling to Keep Up
May 17, 2022, 4:30 AM
Half of all crypto litigation are class actions or private suits, according to the firm’s data.
PODCAST:Listen to Sam talk more about this story on our weekly legal news podcast
“There’s been a steady stream of cases from regulators, but what’s really exploded is private litigation,” said Jason Gottlieb, chair of Morrison Cohen’s white collar and regulatory enforcement practice group in New York.
The rise in litigation is encouraging Big Law operations to bolster their crypto practices. Firms including Jenner & Block, Goodwin Procter, and Morrison & Foerster in the last few months have added new crypto partners to their rosters, including former fraud prosecutors, securities litigators and investment funds lawyers.
The litigation growth comes at a tumultuous time for crypto. A backer of the collapsed TerraUSD stablecoin lost $3 billion in cryptocurrency reserves in a failed effort to restore its peg to the dollar, Bloomberg News reported Monday. Bitcoin on May 12 hit its lowest level since 2020 and was down 50% from its November high, according to Bloomberg.
Perkins Coie has so much activity on the crypto front that it holds weekly team calls, typically including 50 to 70 firm attorneys, said Joe Cutler, firmwide co-chair of the firm’s fintech industry group. “We have content coming out of our ears,” he said.
At Latham & Watkins, more than 700 lawyers worked on crypto or blockchain issues in 2021 alone, said Yvette Valdez, co-chair of the firm’s global digital assets and Web3 practice.
“The market is exploding, not just at the partner level but at the associate level too,” Valdez said.
The result is a buyer’s market for lawyers, as firms see colleagues leave for general counsel positions at crypto companies, said Joshua Ashley Klayman, U.S. head of fintech and head of blockchain and digital assets for Linklaters in New York.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, Binance Holdings Ltd., is looking to hire more than 30 lawyers, Bloomberg Law reported Monday. Another cryptocurrency exchange, Bittrex Global GmbH, hired a Shearman & Sterling senior associate late last year to be its general counsel.
“There’s seemingly a fire hose of work that could, and does, come in,” Klayman said.
Crypto Rules
New US government crypto polices in progress promise even more work for firms.
US lawmakers, including Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey, top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, are proposing legislation. Toomey last month released a draft proposal to set new rules for stablecoins, Bloomberg News reported.
Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Ross Behnam said last week that federal regulators are considering steps they can take if Congress fails to act. US Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler has said he believes most digital assets are subject to his rules and that he’s beefing up enforcement.
Upcoming rules are “going to generate a ton of litigation,” said Mark Califano, a partner with Dentons and an independent director of the crypto exchange Bitstamp USA Inc.
The Lawsuits
The crypto lawsuits keeping firms busy touch on commercial matters, employment, and business failures that sometimes involve bankruptcies.
Celebrities, and even a famed French fashion house, became enmeshed in private legal actions.
Plaintiffs in early January filed a putative class action against Kim Kardashian, former boxing champ Floyd Mayweather Jr., and others in Heugerich v. Gentile. The suit alleges the defendants made false and misleading statements in social media posts to investors of the cryptocurrency token EthereumMax.
One week later, Hermes International, the Paris-based maker of scarves, women’s bags and other lifestyle accessories, sued Mason Rothschild in federal court in Manhattan. The suit alleges trademark infringement of the company’s Birkin bag trademarks.
The defendant allegedly created and sold METABIRKINS NFTs, short for “non-fungible tokens,” or non-replicable, digital collectible items, in the augmented or virtual-reality “metaverse.”
Some of the suits involve initial coin offerings and questions over whether the bits are really unregistered securities offerings, Gottlieb said. The SEC is examining creators of NFTs and the exchanges where they trade to determine if some of the assets run afoul of agency rules, Bloomberg News reported in March.
WATCH: Tax Your Crypto and NFTs? Yes, the IRS Wants Its Cut
Crypto Practices
At most firms, crypto efforts are structured as interdisciplinary groups that involve partners—and increasingly, associates—from existing firm practices.
The lawyers working on crypto have specialties such as tax, banking, mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, data privacy, and patents and intellectual property.
Their efforts run the gamut from business formations and dissolutions, to regulatory work and litigation, Klayman said. Specific matters include everything from writing letters to the SEC to keeping clients aware of regulations and disputes, she said.
Firms try to make clients aware of how to get on the right side of regulations before the company is targeted, said Judie Rinearson, co-chair of the global fintech group at K&L Gates.
“It takes a special lawyer-client relationship to navigate regulations and laws that are a little gray or unclear,” Rinearson said. “You want to be the good guy in this.”
‘High-End Counsel’
Despite the recent downturn in crypto value, firms said they’re optimistic about the future of their practices, with new venture capital and private equity investments padding crypto companies.
“Money is still pouring into crypto,” Cutler said. Despite last week’s drops, “I’ve yet to get a panic call,” he said.
He termed crypto value declines as corrections that need to be put in perspective. “When people focus on days, weeks, or months, and not years, it’s easy for them to conclude it’s wildly volatile,” Cutler said. “But it’s not true.”
Andrew Ceresney, co-chair of Debevoise & Plimpton’s litigation department, said his firm sees no shortage of paying crypto clients.
“In the beginning, there weren’t many crypto companies that had the means to be able to afford us,” Ceresney said. “Now, more and more crypto companies are able to afford high-end legal counsel.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Sam Skolnik in Washington at sskolnik@bloomberglaw.com
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chris Opfer at copfer@bloomberglaw.com; John Hughes at jhughes@bloombergindustry.com
https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2023/...-setting-powerful-precedent-for-nft-creators/
Hermès Wins Trademark Lawsuit Against MetaBirkins NFTs, Setting Powerful Precedent for NFT Creators
The verdict ends a year-long battle between the French luxury house and NFT artist Mason Rothschild over his MetaBirkin NFT collection.
By Cam Thompson
Feb 8, 2023 at 10:03 a.m. CST
Updated Feb 8, 2023 at 3:08 p.m. CST
After several days of deliberation, the nine-person jury in the copyright infringement trial between Hèrmes and non-fungible token (NFT) artist Mason Rothschild ruled Wednesday in favor of the French luxury brand.
The Hermès lawsuit involved Rothschild's MetaBirkins NFT collection. The jury awarded $133,000 in damages to Hermès, determining that Rothschild did, in fact, profit off Hermès' goodwill by producing NFTs based on the design house's Birkin bags.
The jury also decided the NFTs were not protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, as Rothschild's lawyers had argued during the trial.
The case sets an important precedent for NFT creators and builds the framework for intellectual property (IP) law as it relates to digital creations. Down the line, creators like Rothschild might have to be more careful creating NFTs with other brands' IP to avoid future trademark lawsuits.
David Leichtman, Leichtman Law managing partner, told CoinDesk TV on Tuesday that the case wasn’t necessarily about Mason Rothschild’s use of the protected Birkin brand. Rather, it was about whether he intended to mislead consumers into believing the MetaBirkin NFTs were associated with Hermès’ flagship product.
“The question is, were [consumers] really going to be confused by the MetaBirkins, whether or not the relevant consuming audience for Hermès products would be confused by the defendant’s works,” said Leichtman.
Hermès filed suit against Rothschild in January 2022 after the Los Angeles-based artist released an NFT collection titled MetaBirkins based on the brand’s iconic Birkin handbag. In the filing, the fashion house claimed that Rothschild was "stealing the goodwill in Hermès' famous intellectual property to create and sell his own line of products," which could create confusion among its consumer base.
Rothschild argued that his project was simply art that provided a larger commentary on the fashion industry, and that his artistic expression was protected by the First Amendment.
After a year of battling over trademark infringement allegations, the Hermès vs. Metabirkins lawsuit came to trial beginning Jan. 30.
Trying the case relied heavily upon the Rogers v. Grimaldi standard, also known as the Rogers test, which examines the balance between artistic expression and trademark infringement.
Over the course of the trial, Hermès and Rothschild brought in experts on trademark law and NFTs to provide testimonies that focused on consumer confusion as well as brand dilution.
In closing arguments on Monday, Hermès’ lawyer Oren Warshavsky reiterated that Rothschild’s MetaBirkin NFTs not only misled consumers into believing the two brands were related, but that the use of the Birkin name in the NFT collection weakened the Hermès’ brand.
After the verdict was released, Rothschild posted a Twitter thread about the precedent that the case will set for artists in the future in regards to creativity and IP.
"Take nine people off the street right now and ask them to tell you what art is but the kicker is whatever they say will now become the undisputed truth," said Rothschild in a tweet. Later in the thread he continued, "What happened today was wrong. What happened today will continue to happen if we don’t continue to fight. This is far from over."
UPDATE (Feb. 8 21:05 UTC): Added Twitter reaction from Rothschild.
So I guess buying this NFT makes one literally a meta-
What do you feed those girls? Your egg yields steady this winter vs last winter, MT?
My neighbor puts out a garden. He digs 12" deep hole when he plants his yellow squash and in go a couple shovels of fresh horse crap, covered by his planting mound of dirt with a few squash plants on top. As the garden gets established you can tell when those squash hit the payload, the squash explode up out of there like crazy. The way he splains it the buffer of dirt on top of the crap keeps it from burning out the plant like it would if just put right in there fresh. Clever dude.
%%
A bit of Purina, Co-op feed + free/free range
/ so they get bugs, all kinds of berries + creation goodies.Actually when i kept hens, they tended to taper off egg laying in winter + i never did like the idea of artificial light to ''goose'' the egg laying production / so to speak.
i dont blame the commercial growers from doing that.
I kept them in a metal pen like they do Sam Bankman Fried, for thier own good ; except in their case it was not punishment; like SB Fried' s pig pen is punishment.
