Crypto Legal Landscape: US & EU | Boston Blockchain Week 2026

Ian, thank you so much for that warm welcome. Um, it's uh it's great to see all of you in the audience today. Um, one thing that was striking to me about the last panel uh including how great they were is that everybody was pretty much smiling which uh you know two years ago if you got a a panel of crypto lawyers and advocates together there would be a lot of frowns on the stage. So, uh, things have definitely changed. Uh, but our panel is going to take a different tack from the last one.

Obviously, that focused on a lot of what's going on in Washington DC today with enforcement actions and market structure and regulatory. Uh what we want to do is zoom the lens out a little bit to both sides of the Atlantic and uh give you a little taste of uh obviously what's happened here in the United States, but also what's happened in the EU. Uh compare and contrast those approaches and really zoom in on what founders of crypto businesses who hope to do business in multiple jurisdictions have to be thinking about given the uh mass amount of change that has happened. uh over the past year or 18 months. Uh as Ian said, I'm Gus Coldella.

I'm the chief legal officer of Castle Island Ventures and we're a very proud multi-year sponsor of Boston Blockchain Week and I'm very proud to be here with this esteemed panel. Uh I'm going to let each of them introduce themselves and then we'll get right into it. Go ahead, Roman.

Okay, fine. Thanks a lot kind of. Thank you for having us and kind of Ian, wherever you are, great event kind of thank you for organizing. Uh Roman Beck, professor at Bentley University. Um, I think I'm bringing the European flavor here on the on the panel.

I'm, as you can hear from my accent, I'm German. Um, and before I joined Bentley, where I founded the CryptoLedger Lab, I'm teaching decentralized finance and blockchain applications, undergrad and grad level. You know, if you have kids over there, you know, hopefully they take my course. Um, I was for 11 years in Copenhagen in Denmark where I was running the European Blockchain Center, uh, advising the European Commission. I wrote the EU um ethical guidelines for blockchain systems.

I was the convenor at ISO for developing the blockchain governance standard TS23635 if you want to download that one. Uh and have done a lot of advisory and also kind of coaching you know um members of parliament in in Westminster in Germany in the rice t in Berlin in in Copenhagen. The Russian buma was at my place uh 20 senators over the years you know. that is a bit like the regulatory flavor and standardization background I'm bringing with I am not a lawyer I typically refer to myself as a blockchain economist with regulatory and standardization experience hands-on experience I'm doing this

thank you Roman Micah

hello I'm Micah Drayton I'm one of the partners at Caldwell Law and I'm the director of the technology practice uh my practice mainly sounds in intellectual property both pursuit and monetization of it And um it's an interesting coincidence as you mentioned consulting with the Duma because I have not met with any of those people in my entire life.

Good for you.

But I I have worked with clients at various levels of blockchain usage both inventors of novel blockchain technologies in their own right and people who invent or work with technologies utilizing them and helping them to come to market. to bring some useful perspective in that regard.

Thank you, Michael. Rich.

Thank Thank you, Gus. Sorry, I had to get used to the microphone here. Uh, I'm Rich Kerr. I'm the Boston office managing partner at Hannes Boone. I'm also a member of the investment management and digital assets practice there where u I work with traditional finance companies in developing products to be used on the blockchain, tokenized otherwise.

Uh I heard Mike Duke up here telling his story about 2012 having to determine whether Bitcoin was a security for purposes of the the investment company act. And uh it's interesting because around 2012 I was at another another law Boston based law firm and was asked by one of the federal regulators to write an opinion determining that Bitcoin was a currency so that they could regulate it. We ultimately decided that we could not be give them conclusive guidance in that regard and here we are. 14 years later.

Awesome. Thank you all for for those introductions. Um, let's get started on this side of the pond, but let's set the table. I mean, I think we can all agree that the last 12 to 18 months in crypto digital assets policy has probably been the most consequential uh that we've seen since all of us have been uh in this industry. Uh, let's get started with you.

Uh, top three things that have happened in the United States and uh and where you what is the the big question that's unresolved so far?

That's a that's a big question itself right there. But um I think you know I think you kind of hit it in your introduction when you mentioned that two years ago if you had an event like this everybody would be hanging their head and you know sort of wo is me uh what is the United States with digital assets? I think the largest change that we've seen not only in the US but probably you know globally in last 18 months is the significant sea change in not only attitude tone of the US government with respect to blockchain digital assets across the board. Not I'm a securities lawyer but this is not just a securities issue. We had securities issue you know the president's task force on digital assets issued its report in July 25 which was which was designed to sort of give direction to all the regulatory agencies about trying to define a clear path towards the United States becoming a leader in digital technology.

Uh, I recall going to an event like this in I think it was November right after the election or maybe it was December. You would have thought it was Fourth of July the way folks were were talking about the United States moving forward. Um, since that time time I think we've seen an unprecedented amount of regulatory activity and I'll speak to the SEC specifically but talk to um I think at last count I think the SEC had issued something like 17 substantive guidance statements, no action letters or commission interpretations that in some way, shape or form were designed to move the needle forward towards a towards a coherent regulatory structure for digital assets in the United States. I think as as a regulatory lawyer, I'll tell you that for them to use the guidance process and the tools available to them short of rule making to do that was was, you know, really significant. Hadn't happened, but we we heard Taylor up here this morning uh you know, kind of talking through a number of them, so I won't do them all, but they looked at things as little as determining a me determining a meme co memecoin is not a security.

seems like nobody ever should have determined it to be a security but their predecessors in Washington did. So I think that when we look at it the you know the just the tone the shift the desire to really create a clarity around the use of this technology has you know has created a shift not only in the United States but globally. um as they you know worked through with the task force and and others through all this sort of I would say you know the shorter form guidance we're now starting to see more significant activity last in last spring we got the SEC's release of their taxonomy or their the commission's interpretation on what is and is not a security in the digital asset space that was significant for for many many issuers right to walk through that taxonomy and know that there's actually a framework that not only you were adhering to, but the commission is going to adhere to and you're not going to be beholden to the whims of whatever examiner is in front of you was was a sea change for the market. We're now seeing we see regulation crypto which Taylor talked through in detail where they're creating exemptions for not only the startups but ongoing fundraising and and really defining what is and is not an investment contract in the digital asset space so that firms know going into the startup phase when they are going to be subject to the securities laws. Now just I think two weeks after that we had the proposal for for the transfer agency rules which I won't say that it was the primary driver but if you read through the 412 pages of that rule proposal it is blockchain and tokenization figures prominently in their thinking about about how how the future of the United States securities transactions are going to work and it is that rule proposal I think said it well.

There's 60 days I think from this Monday though, this two past Tuesday to comment on that rule. I encourage this industry to comment as well as the securities industry around where we want to be. Um we don't need we don't need to go into the genius act which was passed past July, the clarity act which which I you know I'm feeling pretty down about after the uh poly markets prediction earlier. But the point is our federal government has had a significant focus on creating infrastructure and you know regulatory infrastructure in this space and it has allowed the United States to I think in some cases catch up with where the rest of the world is and maybe that's where I'll stop and leave to my colleagues.

You know that's awesome Rich. I think the uh the striking thing about what you just described is that almost all of it besides the Genius Act is agency action. It's executive action. It's the president's task force. It's rulemakings and guidance from the SEC and the CFTC.

Right. And I didn't talk to even me reference the the federal banking agencies who at the same time were were effectively issuing guidance revoking their prior orders which are issued under the prior administration. So,

so if we if we take that as what's going on in the US and then turn our eyes to the EU, EU is taking a significantly different approach. starting with the top level legislation which is MA and now so what are the what are the big changes what should we have our eyes on as lawyers and builders and developers in the blockchain space as we think about doing business

oh wow that is a well that is a a good question kind of first of all kind of I think what we're seeing in the US is actually a catch up phase you know kind of in short in a in a short period of time because the US wasn't leading in any way uh in the crypto and blockchain space not only because of the previous um administration. You know, if you think about this um it was the uh regulator in the province of Ontario who was the first in the world who was actually coming around with a regulated security token offering. Uh there was I we've been there with a official delegation from Denmark studying what they were doing in Toronto to about if we have to do something to put an end to ICOs when you were talking about that with colleagues here you know in the states you know they were sort of like completely what are you guys talking about so actually it is good and it's a great opportunity and maybe the window of opportunity is right kind of sometimes being leading edge can be bleeding edge and that brings us to to mika or micah right uh so I think kind of um one important thing to to mention up front is you know kind of I think clearly everyone in the room but it's worth mentioning I mean there's a difference between common law and civil law right you know kind of in Europe everything is regulated from the beginning here case based you know let's see what's going to happen and then regulate afterwards that has pros and cons as we all know Europe is very much concerned about consumer protection uh if I have to characterize what the US is concerned about is kind of innovation and growth right and and maybe secondary kind of consumer protection. So you can say you know kind of Europe is is is slow and it's stifling innovation but it has this different background for good or bad. So so Mika is also something very similar to the clarity act if you will the discussion was you know kind of some people loved it some people hated it you know every people other people in previous uh panels here mentioned at least now we have a common language you know we can we can a thing a thing and don't have to poke around.

Uh but here again you know if you think about the first regulator who came around with some substantial you know kind of classification was the Swiss regulator kind of what is a utility token was is a security token what is a payment token. So we are seeing actually a lot of these things that we are now kind of more or less taking for granted and talk about have sort of like a long history in other regions of the world and most of those regions are in in Europe. I was doing a workshop in in Westminster in London for for um for the parties there and uh talked also the Bank of England already back in 2017 when they were working on on a crypto sterling a CBDC you know so like I know that this is a is a loaded topic but if you think about the different activities so there is a rich past the question is what to look at and look forward um well right now kind of similar you know we have Nika 2 you know there is a consultation phase right now kind of updating it you know now actually uh the first time uh Europe can take lessons learned from other regions of the world you know kind of often you know in that regard Mika and you know if you think about GDPR or the AI act you know kind of somehow that is something you can discuss wherever you are in the world even though it's not necessarily affecting you so the the the infamous Brussels effect but um it was also always tricky for for Europe to come up with something and building on on on lessons learned or the shoulder of joints you know you being first is not necessarily a good thing uh and as everything needs to be regulated from the from from start you know that puts you at a risky position so actually it is quite good right now to update Mika um and uh a lot of eyes is kind of pointing towards what's going on in Washington right now while at the same time and I guess we will talk about that something today and yesterday I really heard even I haven't really heard a lot of discussion about risk management and the need for sort of like uh sound foundations legal sound foundations for risk management and something I haven't heard at all is uh digital sovereignity and if we talk about what Europe is concerned about this is almost number one on the on the priority list for more or less obvious reasons

that's an awesome rundown thank you Mike I want to turn it over to as somebody who is super close to the both the technologists and the technology. Um we've just heard the different regulatory visions and actions between the United States and the EU over the past year to 18 months. U does this affect how people are building their products? Uh or is this more of a compliance issue or is it some combination of both?

Well, obviously it's mainly compiance issue. Do I have the microphone? Obviously, it's mainly compliance issue in that the most immediate challenge that any of these regulations pose is the challenge of complying with the regulations, especially if you're going to do transatlantic or crossborder transactions. And I think a common concern is um a common concern people have is how they're going to manage to comply with the regulations in multiple jurisdictions at the same time. And I think that actually uh the EU can be very helpful in this regard because as a civil regulation first regime they tend to take the lead to such an extent that they create economic ground truths for anyone who's got a multinational business platform and as a result rational makers in places like the United States and others have to um have to work within that economic ground.

truth or they risk disrupting the businesses that they're trying to support. Uh, another big advantage of Europe's approach in my opinion is that more than being right or wrong, it's often important for regulators to be certain because uncertainty is risk and risk is expensive. And um, the main advice that people are probably getting on compliance right now is, you know, try to just use the belt and subpenders approach. Comply as closely as you can European rules if you have any chance that you're going to be interacting with them. Similarly to the privacy regulations, um I would like to point out though that there are some significant differences between the uh regulatory regime and the technological reality of cryptocurrency as compared to privacy on websites.

websites have this um borderless tendency, this way in which you you can't necessarily guarantee that you're going to know where people are coming from on the website. Whereas in cryptocurrency, there's been this increasing trend towards um compliance with anti-moneyaundering regulations and so forth, which means that you actually have to know quite a bit about who your customers are and where they are and so forth and therefore which regulatory regime would affect them. And most of these regulatory regimes do have well- definfined um regional parameters. So I'd say you're kind of in the driver's seat. If you don't want to enter the the market in on one side of the Atlantic, you can probably avoid doing so.

Um because you have to be able to do that in order to comply with the basic rules that affect most kinds of financial transactions now. But um I would expect that it won't be especially ownorous to simply Although it might be ownorous to do either of them, if that makes any sense.

Yeah, it definitely does. Um, we've been talking generally about the rules and about the differences. Let's do a a little bit of a case study. I think one of the things that's u that everyone in the industry is thinking about, certainly the regulators are thinking about it is the tokenization of securities, public securities. There's a debate going on just over the past week between the CEO of AMC and the CEO of Robin Hood about this very topic.

And I know that uh Taylor is thinking about it, his whole team at the SEC is thinking about it. Um Rich, is is is this something that the rules that already exist in the United States can handle? Do we need new rule making? What's the SEC's sort of approach to uh to tokenization of of securities?

So, It's a great question and I think I think to start with you know we are tokenizing securities now. There's issuers in this room who are tokenized sec tokenizing securities and they've they've done so within the confines of existing regulatory framework. So I think yes the existing rules do allow for tokenization. I think the t the the challenge really is is can tokenization happen on a on a broader scale without not only rulemaking but with you know fuller adoption by the the large central depositories and intermediaries in the United States. I always I say we don't have a rulemaking problem.

We have an infrastructure problem. And it's kind of a chicken and the egg issue in that the those central depositories and and large plat fund platforms or securities platforms and intermediaries were not willing to take steps towards you know building the infrastructure necessary to move tokenized securities in in a sort of in a broader scale until they had some clarity to use that word. Now the thought was the clarity was going to come through the clarity act but we're seeing that hasn't happened and we're seeing major institutions and major market participants now you know taking steps towards building that infrastructure. DTCC a couple of months ago with the participation of 30 major financial institutions conducted a massive test of trading public public securities in tokenized form. They did so on the basis of an SEC no action letter that they were so that was a sort of a public private partnership.

You had you had the CDS um serving as the central player. You have all the major significance financial institutions participating. But the SEC granted no action letter a no action relief that allowed them to do it in live form. So I think that it can happen in a small scale in the existing regulatory framework but to in order to move us towards broader adoption which I think we all expect to happen in the next 5 to 10 years we are going to have to see you know either more activity like we're seeing from the SEC now in the rulem or clarity and then the rule making that's going to come out of that

completely and I think one other thing to keep our eyes on is u what you just described is uh tokenization with centralized players. And I think uh at least part of the industry is thinking about do can we move either under the existing regulatory scheme or under a new regulatory scheme toward decentralized uh rails? Uh and and what would that take from a rule making point of view? Um Roman, I'll turn it over to you. It it seems when I hear Rich talking about the US, it seems like there might be an advantage to the fact that existing regulations sort of allow this to happen.

There might be some tailoring that needs to go on to do additional things. But is the EU handcuffed by NA or uh how would how would tokenization of real world assets including securities happen under that?

I don't think that the EU or kind of the member states are handcuffed by MA as I said kind of there's an update of Mika even though Mika isn't that old yet you know so like so there's actually uh for an organization like a confederation like the European Union they are reacting with speed of light you know kind of given the structure how the system is built updating Mika already now is actually a clear indication it's important they've le they've learned their lesson and they're reacting kind of swiftly built upon building upon that lesson but let me go back to timing and actually the the point I made I tried to make earlier kind of somebody mentioned Libra today you know if you talk to the people behind Libra in the project for them it's a bittersweet experience you know because they were too too early you know having the right idea at the right time makes a lot of sense um give you another example talking about Europe you know the German Bundesark the German legislator was kind of quite ahead of time kind of the tokenization of of of financial instruments I'm talking about corporate bonds is poss possible in Germany since 2021. And uh the very first company that did that was Zmens, the technology company with a a moderate amount, I think kind of $24,000 or so on chain, you know, tokenized corporate bonds. And we all thought, man, you know, this is the moment, you know, kind of in the last 10, 15 years, we all were waiting for that breakthrough moment in that industry. So finally, you know, the flood doors are open and the Trefoy and and and corporate Germany in that case got the lesson and they will all move into that field. That was the only company that ever issued corporate bonds on ledger in Germany.

And I was sitting in Copenhagen at that time working in Denmark and I thought fine let's see kind of if that is a gamecher and uh I w I was approached by two companies J the Chinese conglomerate company I think Volvo and Volvo trucks and um piece of Mercedes or so belongs to Jile but they're all doing all kinds of other things. J in Sweden was approaching me saying Roman this is great how are we doing this out of our office in London kind of which chain kind of how do we tokenize what is the architecture recommendation coming forward and the other company was also a Chinese company Huawei out of England saying kind of fantastic not a single Germany came around and asked kind of how are we going to do that so timing is important and I think the timing right now works in favor of the US right so we are not handcuffed kind of but we actually either have we you know Europe and in all these kind of little examples I'm trying to give you kind of either we're sort of like too isolated too early or too little which is exactly why kind of Nika and now the EU commission is trying to kind of um double up so I had a had a call with DG connect recently and uh they are right now working on the seven years plan well that's how large organizations work they have seven years plans on the future of networks Right. And uh after they spent I don't know like maybe 2002 250 million dollars over the last six seven eight years on blockchain initiatives of different types not exactly a small number mainly to develop the European blockchain services infrastructure to make crossber you know digital markets possible by the way something which would be a perfect blueprint if we come back to the US chain idea but that is a different story. Um they lost actually interest you know because first of all kind of regulators are right now very much focused on AI also in Europe so that is overshadowing everything and secondly kind of regulators and administrators are quite impatient if they are impatient uh and haven't really seen the return on invest you know kind of if you put a quarter billion dollars into technology innovation over a couple of years in Europe and you don't see that there's actually something like an ignition of initiatives you know you lose lose interest but as I said you know decentralization recently become a very important topic for two reasons internally to be resilient as an organization you know next time a country you know we had a in Hungary we had kind of Polish government that was anti-European you know a decentralized system is way more resilient again against sort of like players internally who who go wild but resilience This is also kind of guaranteed through decentralization against players from the outside and as I mentioned before under the umbrella term digital soenity right now that is kind of freeing up a lot of energy and power. So kind of something that may look outside as a lamed uh bureaucratic slowmoving uh beast in Brussels is actually kind of going on on on on on turbo.

You know those who are a bit older here, the the gray kind of PCs we had under the desk where actually if you needed extra power, you push the turbo button and at the end the turbo button was always pushed because always you wanted to have that extra turbo out of your out of your Pensium Intel whatever. That is actually what happens right now in Brussels.

I remember the tur turbo button is awesome. Micah, I'm going to give you the last word because we're running low on time. Um, say we're back here at Boston Blockchain Week 2028, uh, and we're looking back on on today. What are the things that we haven't talked about that we and the audience should be focused on from a technological regulatory point of view?

Uh, well, I I think one thing that's quite exciting and could be coming down the pipe at any time is the possibility of a sea change in systems themselves, which all of this um People have been talking about the um sort of gamebreaking effects of AI, but a lot of people are working very hard right now on quantum computing and they're making some surprisingly good progress in recent years. Quantum computing has a real chance of breaking a lot of MPMPlete problems which would destroy the security of many of the more popular um digital signatures that we use right now and could even compromise some hashing algorithms. Uh so the entire industry could find itself scrambling to adopt the technologies at least in theory exist to to solve this even for key exchange you could you could probably come up with something some sort of decentralized certificate authority sort of approach I think but um the fact is uh the fact that uh quantum computing is so uncertain means that I don't know for sure that it's problem by 2028 but Um, I think the fact that it's uncertain also means that there's no ne not necessarily much incentive for most of the core players to really plan for it the way there was for example for Y2K which actually had a specific date you know where they had to deal deal with it.

Please join me in thanking this panel for keeping the turbo button pressed the whole time and uh helping us learn about some important topics. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks everyone.