Law & Policy

Founders

1/ As U.S. regulators continue their war on crypto, many founders are thinking about geofencing as a compliance strategy.

It can work, but only if it's done right.

That’s why @dbarabander and I wrote this Practical Guide to Geofencing:
https://blog.variant.fund/newsletter-legal-regulatory-affairs

About 6 months ago I read a summary of a 2nd Circuit case where the court held that Binance was subject to the U.S. securities laws, in part, because it used AWS instances in California.

My immediate reaction was that I misread the summary. I reread it; nope, I read it correctly. I then assumed the author made a mistake, so I read the opinion myself. Nope again, server locations were core to the court's reasoning.

This sent me down a rabbit hole. How could the location of a server be so important? So I read every crypto x securities x jurisdictional scope case I could find to try and understand. I became obsessed. 

Today I'm excited to publish with @jchervinsky the fruits of this obsession. We've distilled everything we learned by reviewing tons of case law and regulatory enforcement actions into a Practical Guide to Geofencing for crypto companies. I hope you enjoy.

Check it out here:

About 6 months ago I read a summary of a 2nd Circuit case where the court held that Binance was subject to the U.S. securities laws, in part, because it used AWS instances in California.

My immediate reaction was that I misread the summary. I reread it; nope, I read it correctly. I then assumed the author made a mistake, so I read the opinion myself. Nope again, server locations were core to the court's reasoning.

This sent me down a rabbit hole. How could the location of a server be so important? So I read every crypto x securities x jurisdictional scope case I could find to try and understand. I became obsessed. 

Today I'm excited to publish with @jchervinsky the fruits of this obsession. We've distilled everything we learned by reviewing tons of case law and regulatory enforcement actions into a Practical Guide to Geofencing for crypto companies. I hope you enjoy.

Check it out here: https://variant.fund/articles/practical-guide-to-geofencing/

GC and Investment Partner @variant | casts are not legal advice | I am not your lawyer