Archive: April 2023

Once relegated to the fringe of the crypto/FinTech communities, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are suddenly mainstream, appearing in new and increasingly commercial use cases, such as financial services, automotive industry applications, electronic gaming, sport highlights, music albums, film, art, fashion and digital branding.

On 25 April 2023, the Bank of England (BoE) published a statement on the renewed Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) service. In the statement, the BoE confirms that the renewed service will take effect from June 2024 and will deliver benefits across a number of areas.

In a landmark decision on the legal status of digital assets in Hong Kong handed down on 31 March 2023, the Court of First Instance, in Re Gatecoin Limited, has ruled that cryptocurrencies satisfy the definition of “property” under Hong Kong law and are capable of being held on trust.

On 17 April 2023, the Joint Regulatory Oversight Committee (JROC), co-chaired by the FCA and the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), published a report setting out its recommendations for the next phase of open banking in the UK.

On 17 April 2023, the FCA published a speech by Jessica Rusu, FCA Chief Data, Information and Intelligence Officer, at the Innovate Finance Global Summit. The speech focused on innovation, artificial intelligence (AI) and the future of financial regulation.

In two recent webinars, we explore some of the key situations in which AI liability can arise and consider what businesses (including financial institutions) can do to manage these risks.

On 11 April 2023, the FCA announced that it would be leading the Global Financial Innovation Network (GFIN)’s first ever virtual Greenwashing TechSprint. The TechSprint will be hosted on the FCA’s Digital Sandbox and aims to bring together international regulators, firms and innovators to address sustainable finance as a collective priority. UK-based firms are invited to apply from 17 April 2023.

In this special edition podcast, our US partners Stephen Aschettino, Andrew Lom and Kevin Harnisch discuss the recent uptick in regulatory enforcement activity from federal regulators against crypto exchanges, with the SEC issuing a Wells Notice to Coinbase and suing Beaxy, and the CFTC suing Binance and seeking permanent injunctions to also stop Binance from working with US-based customers. They explore the significance of these actions and what they may signal about the evolving landscape for digital assets in the US.

State privacy laws, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), require companies to implement opt-out solutions and honor applicable privacy requests. But if you have implemented an opt-out, how do you know it actually works?

At last, UK Government publishes its White Paper on AI – “A pro-innovation approach to AI regulation” – an opportune start, but as expected, a framework with detail to follow…