Digital Assets & Web3

Latham’s digital assets and Web3 team works at the leading edge of blockchain-enabled innovation, often setting legal and regulatory precedents that govern new assets and industries.

We help innovators and investors bring to market new digital assets, cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), crypto derivatives and structured products, market infrastructure solutions, and blockchain-based protocols and organizations. We advise clients across the digital asset and Web3 ecosystem, including venture capital and investment funds, tech companies and protocol developers, exchanges and marketplaces, entertainment, sports, and media organizations, ventures developing decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), cryptocurrency miners, as well as institutional infrastructure providers and financial institutions.

Latham combines a sophisticated understanding of the technology underlying digital assets and Web3 with a commercial sensibility and ahead-of-the-curve insight into the regulatory direction of travel. We draw on the team’s vast knowledge and experience to advise on:

• Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols in light of fast-paced legal and regulatory developments
• Establishing and investing in DAOs
• Structuring compliant stablecoins and tokenized assets
• All aspects of the NFT ecosystem, including representing IP owners, NFT service providers, NFT marketplaces, video game developers, and investors
• Establishing and maintaining compliant exchanges and alternative trading platforms
• Investing in blockchain technology and digital assets, including through structures involving tokens
• Establishing derivatives and spot cryptocurrency trading platforms
• Obtaining licensing to conduct virtual currency and money transmitter business activities
• Addressing evolving intellectual property concepts in Web3
• Integrating blockchain and token mechanics in video games
• Establishing custodial solutions
• Advising on enforcement and litigation matters involving authorities across the regulatory landscape

Our digital asset-focused financial regulatory team often engages with regulatory bodies worldwide, including the SEC, CFTC, FCA, BaFin, HKMA, and MAS, to advise and advocate for clients who are building and investing in digital assets and Web3 solutions. We also routinely represent clients facing government investigations and civil disputes relating to digital asset and cryptocurrency ventures and transactions.

When our clients face government scrutiny related to digital assets, we marshal a team of experienced litigators that includes former enforcement supervisors from major US and UK agencies. Our team regularly advises clients on their most significant digital asset enforcement and litigation matters, including regulatory compliance for token launches and distributions, centralized and decentralized trading platforms, insider trading, market manipulation, and money laundering and sanctions compliance.