Yesterday, Live Bitcoin News commented in an article that bitcoin and assorted cryptocurrencies are likely earning their place in a legal sense, not just a financial sense. The number of class-action lawsuits centering on crypto that have been given the greenlight from federal court judges suggests that many now label cryptocurrencies as assets that deserve the same protection and security as most forms of fiat or precious metals.
Lawsuits Involving Crypto Are Earning a Higher Stance
As it turns out, a new kind of search engine has been built strictly to help legal firms with blockchain and cryptocurrency-based cases. The system is known as the Blockchain Litigation Database (BLD) and includes information regarding the very first cryptocurrency-centered suit dating back to the year 2011.
The system was created by financial law firm Murphy & McGonigle, which is based in Richmond, Virginia. The idea was to bring crypto-based lawsuits and court cases from everywhere in the United States and Canada into a searchable database. At press time, the law firm represents several differing financial institutions, such as Coinbase, Capital One and Morgan Stanley. It charges these clients about $5,000 for initial access to the database, as well as $2,500 per month after that for continued access.
Many law firms within the U.S. are becoming much more involved in crypto-related cases, and the database is designed to give them information they can study about past and present cases to help them with any suits they take on in the future. This just serves as more evidence that cryptocurrencies are becoming more mainstream within both the financial and legal spaces, and many enterprises are treating them as legitimate investments.
Daniel Payne is a partner at Murphy & McGonigle and helped build its current 12-person blockchain division. Discussing the search engine, he comments:
It’s been extremely helpful in giving us added credibility when we market to blockchain-related clients. We’ve probably used the database on at least a dozen pitches.
Among the many cases that seem to garner the most attention are large ones, like the case involving Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht in 2015. In addition, many clients have shown interest in the case of Theresa Tetley approximately eight years ago. Known as the “bitcoin maven,” Tetley ultimately did a year-long prison stint for money laundering. Hers was one of the earliest crypto court cases.
Such lawsuits have come a long way and didn’t really take precedence until 2018. It was during that year that approximately 150 separate cases - more than any previous year - were filed. Approximately half of those cases involved securities laws violations, and about 23 of the cases were filed directly by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Will This Continue Into the Future?
Payne further states:
We feel like there is going to be another wave of litigation not all that dissimilar from the wave of mortgage-backed securities litigation.
The post Law Firms Can Now Research All Crypto-Based Lawsuits appeared first on Live Bitcoin News.
Cryptocurrency is a digital currency that uses encryption (cryptography) to regulate the generation of currency and verify the transfer of funds, independently of a central bank. Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third party adversaries.
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