Addison Cameron-Huff, Blockchain Lawyer

The Bank of Canada released a working paper this month that contains a bold claim: “Lesson 1: Digital currencies will be counterfeited.” The paper is on the lessons that private bank notes from many decades ago hold for digital currencies today. Much of the paper consists of an excellent history of bank notes. But the paper also contains claims about digital currencies, specifically, private, non-Central Bank affiliated digital currencies like Bitcoin. This blog post explains why the working paper's Lesson 1 claim about digital currency counterfeiting is not correct.

The working paper states that bank notes have always been counterfeited. They then go on to explain several problems with digital currencies that have nothing to do with counterfeiting (such as "fraud" and "cyber attacks") and conclude with:

The Delaware Court of Chancery (leading corporate law court in the US) ruled on Wednesday in a case that involved miscounting of shares as part of a buyout of Dole. In a footnote the court notes that blockchain technology would be a good solution to one of the key issues in the case:

“[D]espite laudable and largely successful efforts by the incumbent intermediaries to keep the system working, the problems have grown. ... Distributed ledger technology offers a potential technological solution by maintaining multiple, current copies of a single and comprehensive stock ownership ledger.” - Footnote #1, pgs. 8-9

Delaware is the corporate capital of the United States. It has more corporations than residents. Many jurisdictions would like to follow in Delaware's footsteps and become a hub for incorporations (one benefit: ongoing registration fees). And in 2017 there's an opportunity to use technology to leapfrog Delaware and create a global corporate hub. This blog post lays out how Rwanda could create a Delaware-beating infrastructure based on blockchain technology (also called "Distributed Ledger Technology"). Added bonus: Rwanda create a new class of online corporation with publicly traded securities.

Last week I spoke about blockchain-based corporate voting (and other topics) at the “Blockchain Symposium” held by Gowlings WLG in Toronto. This blog post expands on that discussion and explains why I think corporate voting via blockchain will be reality within the next few years.

Corporate voting is just one aspect of the large constellation of service companies that handles ownership, registration, transfer, settlement, clearing, and other functions of the public securities markets. What's going on in the world of securities management/investor communications?

TD is looking for a manager for their "Enterprise Shared Platform of Blockchain Center of Excellence". The position "reports to the VP, Blockchain CoE to support the business priorities of the Blockchain CoE." The ad was posted a month ago: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/236085965.

The US Federal Reserve published a paper this week on the application of blockchain technology to the payments, clearing and settlement sectors of the US financial system.

The paper is an excellent overview of the current system and how blockchain might change things. Section 2.1 provides explanations of payment processing, securities post-trade processes and the roles of financial intermediaries. From the section on settlement:

Starting a blockchain software business? Below is a checklist of some of the legal & business issues common to this emerging industry.

1. Code

Note: This post was written by Victoria Barclay and Dennis Bardetsky of the CFA Society Toronto. I've republished it here (with their permission) because the publication this appeared in, The Analyst (September edition), is not available online. I've slightly reformatted the article to better fit this blog. I was one of the panelists who spoke at the conference. The original title was "FinTech Conference - Three market developments poised to disrupt your business".

Just over a year ago I met Nachshon Goltz. Fast forward today and together we've built the world's most comprehensive global law search engine and implemented a new model for legal search. We run Global-Regulation.com, a law search engine that makes use of machine translation to make laws written in 25 languages searchable in English.

EY recently released a report for the UK government about how its Fintech sector stacks up against other global financial hubs. Toronto was not on the list of comparable jurisdictions. But if it was, it would probably be in fourth place by region.

I'm a technology lawyer and a legal technology entrepreneur. I was recently asked to contribute to a book about how people are leveraging law degrees outside of law. The author has allowed me to publish my thoughts here and hopefully they'll appear in print at a later date. Below are the three technology products I've developed that wouldn't have happened without a combination of J.D. and programming.

Last summer I wrote about why Ontario's bus system is so uncompetitive. That blog post has received a lot of traffic and I've even received a few emails from entrepreneurs wondering how to start a bus company. This summer the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) is discussing reform and has put out a discussion paper. The paper contemplates removing legal barriers to entry/reforming the Ontario Highway Transport Board and poses seven questions. My answers are at the end of this blog post.

McKinsey & Company (a prominent consulting firm) has released a report on the application of blockchain technology to the insurance industry.

"The DAO" was an attempt to create a virtual currency investment fund on the Ethereum network. I wrote about it from a legal perspective back in May. In the month following my blog post, The DAO reached over $150 million USD in value and was then hacked.

I am back in the office after a couple weeks in Japan (mainly Tokyo, Kyoto and Hiroshima). Below are a few of the highlights.

Teva Canada Ltd. v. Bank of Montreal, 2016 ONCA 94, contains everything you ever wanted to know about how cheques work and is a case study in financial risk. This is interesting reading for anyone who works with cheque systems or is seeking to replace them (re: Fintech industry). The litigation is focussed on the (federal) Bills of Exchange Act.

The case began with a Teva employee writing cheques to himself for around $5 million. The employee registered Master Business Licenses (MBLs) for names similar to Teva customers (and then a couple imaginary ones).

This blog (and the entire cameronhuff.com domain) now uses SSL courtesy of the Let's Encrypt project.

If you're not using SSL, see if your hosting company offers support for Let's Encrypt (Dreamhost has a great integration). It's free and works just as well as any other SSL cert.

A little while ago I had a Skype consultation with an Italian entrepreneur who had a problem with a German software developer. I asked what the problem had to do with Canada and he said nothing. I asked why he wanted to hire me and he said that he'd done extensive research online and thought that I was the best person for the job.

The potential client had a problem and they wanted someone who knew about contracts, law and software to help them out. They didn't think of their problem as an Italian problem or a Swiss problem.*

Global-Regulation.com (I'm the CTO) has published a list of the top word pairs found in global laws. The Excel file can be downloaded here.

I've looked through the top 500 words and taken note below of some of the more interesting word pairs.

A "Decentralized autonomous organization ('DAO')" white paper has been published by German blockchain company Slock.it UG. This white paper is part of a larger conversation that's been going on for a few years in the Bitcoin/blockchain world. The basic idea is to build a software program that runs like a company, but on a decentralized software platform (e.g. Ethereum). Slock.it's paper is one of the longer contributions to this effort (31 pages, including code examples).

This blog post details a few thoughts on the Slock.it proposal, from a lawyer's point of view.