Month: February 2022
After weeks of speculation, Morgan Stanley has confirmed that federal investigators have requested information regarding its block trading business. This news was released in Morgan Stanley’s annual 10-K report. Morgan Stanley reported that the bank has been cooperating with this investigation since 2019. This news comes at a time when the SEC has been cracking down on Fortune…
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Over the past four decades as an attorney (I know it’s been that long!), I have assisted uncountable optimistic and fresh entrepreneurs in building and maintaining their start-up companies. Starting and building a business from the ground up is certainly a challenge many wouldn’t expect as a company grows. For certain, threshold legal and tax…
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Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged 12 additional firms for failure to meet Form CRS (Client Relationship Summary) obligations. Six broker-dealers and six investment advisers agreed to settle charges for neglecting to deliver and file Form CRS. Jon-Jorge Aras, Partner and Chair of Securities Litigation at Warren Law Group states, “Keeping up with your…
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Yesterday, the United States Justice Department announced the first director of the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement team (NCET), Eun Young Choi. The NCET was established to identify and investigate criminal misconduct surrounding cryptocurrency and digital assets. Its primary focus is on virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, infrastructure providers, and other entities enabling the misuse of…
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Yesterday the SEC charged BlockFi LLC with 1) failing to register their retail crypto lending product “BlockFi Interest Accounts (BIAs)” under the 1933 Act and 2) failing to register as an “Investment Company” under the 1940 Act. In a negotiated settlement, BlockFi agreed to pay $50 million in fines, cease offering BIAs until they’ve registered the product with…
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Cryptocurrency is undoubtedly a conversation starter and last night several Super Bowl ads further hyped up the attention around these investments. The major crypto exchanges (FTX, Coinbase, and Crypto.com) showcased their prime-time ads based on the central idea that if you aren’t investing in crypto, you are missing out on making money. The Super Bowl…
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John Keenan & Christopher Warren If you are considering a significant commercial investment from the United States into Canada or vice versa, this article should be of particular interest. The updated United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement effectively eviscerated your rights, a fact not known generally to potential investors. History of United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreements Since the…
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The Department of Justice just booked the largest financial seizure of 3.6 billion dollars of Bitcoin primarily stolen in 2016 (when it had a value of ~70 million). This seizure comes right on the heels of new press releases from the SEC that intimate the promulgation of regulatory and tax regimes for cryptocurrency and blockchain…
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Recently, the SEC has proposed amendments to Regulation ATS, which aims to bring Alternative Trading Systems (ATS) that trade any non-firm interests and provide communication protocols for trading between buyers and sellers for any type of security. These proposed rules (while not mentioning blockchain assets) would require any entity dealing with the exchange, trade, or…
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