This event is a gathering of Executives across Governments, Corporations, and Academia who will participate in talks, panel discussions, and debates on the topic of Best Practices in Blockchain.

Members of Murphy & McGonigle’s FinTech & Blockchain Practice participated in last week’s Blockchain Expo North America in Silicon Valley, delivering a keynote talk, speaking on panels, attending workshops featuring entrepreneurs and business leaders in the blockchain space, and providing their perspectives of what 2019 holds for the blockchain sector.

“It is not illegal to be smarter than your counterparties in a swap transaction, nor is it improper to understand a financial product better than the people who invented the product.”   So wrote Judge Sullivan nearly two years after the bench trial in CFTC v. DRW, in entering judgment in favor of the Defendants on all of the CFTC’s market manipulation claims.  The long-anticipated decision is a significant setback for the CFTC’s anti-manipulation campaign.  

On November 15, 2018, the CFTC’s Division of Enforcement released its Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2018.  This article provides an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the Division’s FY 2018 enforcement campaign, with predictions of trends and developments for the coming year.

Murphy & McGonigle, the financial services and regulatory law firm, today launched its Commodities, Futures & Derivatives Practice. The group handles the full spectrum of legal and regulatory issues arising in connection with structuring, implementing, offering and trading commodities and derivatives, as well as advisory, litigation, and enforcement matters relating to those products.

White Collar partner Robertson Park is a featured contributor to a chapter of the recently published book, Integrity for Competitiveness: On the Road with Compliance Officers.  The book, which is authored by Phillippe Montigny, is published by Ethic Intelligence.

This article discusses the statement of the SEC's Divsions of Corporation Finance, Investment Managementa and Trading and Markets relating regulatory approaches to digital assets.  We discuss in particular the path to compliance for entities that issued securities in a manner that did not comply with the registration requirements of the federal securities laws.