"Basketball Cards are Not Securities"

‘Basketball cards are not securities’ says NFT maker in bid to nix lawsuit

NFT creator Dapper Labs urged a Manhattan federal court to toss a lawsuit claiming its NBA Top Shot Moments are securities, saying the plaintiffs can’t “make a federal securities case over basketball cards.”

The blockchain-based video clips of basketball players were developed as collectables with the National Basketball Association, and bear none of the hallmarks of securities, Dapper Labs wrote in its motion to dismiss the case on Wednesday.

“Basketball cards are not securities. Pokémon cards are not securities. Baseball cards are not securities. Common sense says so. The law says so. And, courts say so,” the company said.

Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes Judge Upholds Conviction in Preliminary Ruling

Lawyers for Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes failed in a long-shot attempt to get her fraud conviction thrown out by telling the judge who oversaw her trial a version of events that highlighted her company’s accomplishments.

US District Judge Edward Davila on Thursday issued a preliminary ruling upholding the guilty verdict reached by a jury in January.

Holmes’s bid to get the judge to overturn the verdict was a gamble that almost all white-collar criminal convicts make, and rarely win. It’s a procedural step to challenge a conviction on appeal.

"Anti-ESG"

… If you call your fund “ESG,” that will make some people more likely to buy it and other people less likely to buy it, and if you are a giant institutional investor like BlackRock Inc. you will do a lot of vague balancing to try to appeal to everyone.

But this is also a huge marketing opportunity for other, smaller investment managers to try to capture anti-ESG market share from BlackRock by leaning into being Not ESG. Like if you just run a regular mutual fund, the incentive six months ago was to rebrand it as an ESG fund and say “ooh, we think about climate change, whatever” to capture ESG dollars. Now, if you run a regular mutual fund, there is an incentive to rebrand it as an anti-ESG fund and say “we absolutely never think about climate change at all” to capture state pension money from Republican-controlled states. Or start a new fund company, why not….

California’s crypto license: Lessons from New York’s BitLicense

Regulating crypto at the state and local level “can backfire,” Malekan said. Crypto is a global industry, and companies can have users all over the world. “If local compliance is too hard,” he said, “then it might be best to just avoid it.” Regulators are in a tough spot, though: The coming federal crypto bill from Sens. Cynthia Lummis and Kirsten Gillibrand envisions some level of local regulation for exchanges and other businesses. And customers, facing a rising level of scams, are clamoring for better protections. Striking a balance will be a tricky challenge.

Metaverse Scammers Have a Bridge to Sell You. The Alabama Securities Commission Is Fighting Back

Actually locking up the alleged scammers is another matter.

In order to stick it to the scammers, regulators must first identify them, Borg told CoinDesk. But doing so can be tough in the metaverse, where fraudsters can cloak themselves in the veil of internet anonymity, which these days means masquerading in sometimes zany ways, Borg said.

“Saying [we’re going to] issue an order against the guy who looks like a duck with a hat on in the metaverse doesn’t do us any good,” Borg said. “We got to track down a computer, trace it and figure out where their money’s going and how they’re operating.”

Beyond the Silk Road: Crypto Needs a Regulatory Course Correction

This raises the question: Will the crypto sector’s most prominent figures – the individuals sometimes pejoratively described as “crypto bros” – be willing to abandon their laissez-faire attitudes and embrace governmental expectations?

Because if not, it is reasonable to assume the industry’s rocky relationship with law enforcement and regulators won’t be improving soon.

For an example of this, consider the industry’s difficulties meeting registration requirements under national anti-money laundering (AML) laws. While the steps for registration are typically simple, some firms have failed to take them in the apparent belief that they should not be obligated to comply with such rules on a global scale, particularly if the regulations vary across jurisdictions.

SPAC-Related Securities Suit Filed Against Building Technology Company

In the latest SPAC-related federal court securities class action lawsuit to be filed, a plaintiff shareholder has filed a securities suit against a building management technology company – which merged with a SPAC in 2021 — that recently restated its financial statements for the reporting periods after the company became publicly traded. The complaint in the new lawsuit filed against Latch, Inc. can be found here. As also noted below, in a separate development, a different plaintiff shareholder has filed a separate SPAC-related Delaware Chancery Court action against former directors and officers of a SPAC and the SPAC’s sponsor.