249451
Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander #249451
Deputy GC @variant | casts are not legal advice | I am not your lawyer
674 Follower 103 Following
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/
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/
This is going to be a great event at Variant’s offices this weekend! I’ll be there building and chatting with founders.
I am unaware of an area of law with more bang for its buck for crypto apps than a website’s terms of service. I know terms of service are not the most exciting thing in the world, but if done right, they can make a huge difference in legal liability exposure.
The key issue apps run into in this area of law is whether the terms are enforceable on the app’s users. So, I looked into tips for increasing the likelihood of enforceability. Here’s a thread with the TLDR.
The key issue apps run into in this area of law is whether the terms are enforceable on the app’s users. So, I looked into tips for increasing the likelihood of enforceability. Here’s a thread with the TLDR.
In my latest post on my blog Proofs and Protocols, I teamed up with my colleague, Variant Investment Partner Cooper Kunz, to dissect the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and browser extensions (e.g., Chrome Extensions). Here’s a thread with the TLDR 👇
As a lawyer who codes (or as @jesse likes to say, I read “dumb contracts and smart contracts”) it’s been a mission of mine to meld the two worlds I’m passionate about: tech and law. This is why I love being a lawyer in the crypto space, because most legal issues are also technical issues. You cannot separate them.