Law Commons^™

A Tokenized Future: Regulatory Lessons From Crowdfunding And Standard Form Contracts, Darian M. Ibrahim

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the world of risk investing in the cryptoeconomy. The broader crypto market is booming despite the latest downturn. People and institutions are buying in. The question is now how to regulate it.

This Article first tackles the question of whether coins, tokens, and other investable cryptoassets are securities. Second, for those cryptoassets that are not securities, this Article seeks to find a regulatory solution that balances promoting innovation with investor protection, just as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would do. To strike the right balance, this Article adopts a proposal by Ian Ayres and Alan Schwartz …

Ftx: How The Sec Should React, Darian M. Ibrahim

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Made Crypto Losses? Don't Assume The Taxman Will Subsidise You, Vincent Ooi, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The key points we made in the article are as follows:1) One might think that because income from transactions involving cryptocurrencies is taxable, the losses from such transactions would also be deductible. Unfortunately, the situation is not quite so straightforward.2) The key question is whether it is possible to establish that there was a trade or business (in trading cryptocurrencies). If so, then the deduction rules are a lot more generous. Otherwise, there will be quite a few restrictions:a) Losses from cryptocurrency transactions are unlikely to be useable to be set off against income from other sources.b) The losses will …

New Assets, (Largely) Same Old Rules: The Taxation Of Digital Tokens, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In this blog post, I highlight the fact that across jurisdictions, tax provisions specifically drafted to address the taxation of digital tokens are still quite rare, meaning that existing orthodox tax rules will have to be applied. However, care must be taken when applying tax provisions and one must be aware of the limits of "reasoning by analogy".Some tax provisions make reference to specific assets or asset classes and it cannot be assumed that digital tokens which look very similar to these assets will inevitably fall under those provisions. For example, no matter how much a digital payment token looks …

A Framework For Understanding The Taxation Of Digital Tokens, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

As a relatively new area, the taxation of digital tokens can give rise to several dangerous misconceptions. This article lays out five propositions to counter these misconceptions: 1) digital tokens are not a single monolithic asset class attracting uniform tax treatment; 2) the common trichotomous division of digital tokens into payment, utility and security tokens is derived from securities regulation and should not be blindly adopted into tax law; 3) the three classes are not mutually exclusive and hybrid tokens may exist; 4) the fact that an asset is a digital token rarely changes its tax treatment by itself, which …

Comment Letter To The U.S. Treasury Department Regarding The Risks Of Stablecoins, Arthur E. Wilmarth Jr.

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This letter responds to the U.S. Treasury Department’s request for public comments on President Biden’s Executive Order No. 14067, “Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets” (Mar. 9, 2022). This letter contends that (1) digital stablecoins currently pose significant risks to U.S. financial markets and investors, (2) stablecoins will create great dangers for our financial system, economy, and society if they become a widely-accepted form of payment for consumer and commercial transactions, and (3) allowing Big Tech firms and other commercial enterprises to issue and distribute stablecoins would seriously undermine our nation’s longstanding policy of separating banking and commerce.

In view …