Canada's provincial securities regulators have approved certain companies to sell cryptocurrency. These platforms have the highest standard of regulation that applies, and are the least risky way for Canadians to buy cryptocurrency. For Ontario residents, the Ontario Securities Commission maintains a list of the approved platforms: https://www.osc.ca/en/industry/registration-and-compliance/registered-crypto-asset-trading-platforms ..read more

I've been a “crypto lawyer” for a decade now. So I did a double-take when I looked at the label on the pasta sauce I'd just eaten: a blockchain authentication label! Blockchains out in the real world. The above picture is the actual pasta sauce I ate. And the link on the QR code goes to this page: https://blockchain.authentico.it/q/?query=f00d00000000000100000000018e7bef3193d4d4b939f8150d73a11016e86fbe&show_cookies=1 ..read more

Craig Wright is an individual who claimed to be the rightful owner of billions of dollars of bitcoin, which he said he lost the keys to when he deleted his files. He wanted the crypto back, but without the keys this should be impossible. Mr. Wright came up with a rather unique strategy, that the rest of this blog explains, which should be studied by everyone who writes code for public blockchains or manages a protocol. So far as I know, Mr. Wright is the first person to seriously attempt this method. The basic idea is to ask a court to require the developers to change the code so that bitcoins ..read more

The 20th century saw dirt roads turn into bitumen and concrete highways around the world. Massive government road building projects (and expropriation) constructed streets and highways across the western world and beyond. These roads were all billed to the taxpayer, with the promise being a massive increase in transportation and thus the economy. It was the century of gasoline and diesel. But this approach has been tapped out. New road construction seems almost like a relic as investors push NVIDIA shares beyond the trillion dollar mark and AI fever grips the business world. Fibre optic lines ..read more

Yesterday I was speaking with a junior lawyer about blogging and explained how I write my posts. They asked me if I'd ever blogged about how I blog, and apparently the answer is no, I haven't ever written a blog post about how I write blog posts. This post explains my custom software for blogging, why I wrote my own blogging software a decade ago, and the advantages of using a static website. Custom Blogging Software ..read more

What would it take for DAOs to overtake traditional corporations as the main way that Internet-based businesses are organized? It's easy to take shots at DAOs but this blog post looks at what it would take for this transformation to actually happen. We're certainly not even close to a world where most tech is built and delivered by DAOs, but there are hints that DAOs can be used for quite a bit of what's currently done by traditional companies. They're starting to be used for funding scientific research or creating digital dollar equivalents. In another sense of the term, some major blockchain ..read more

Blockchain developers and Shakespeare have in common the same dream: “let's kill all the lawyers”. This blog post explains why the dreams of both aren't possible, by exploring the need for lawyers in complex technological systems. The Dream: A World Without Lawyers ..read more

It's commonly considered among professionals in the anti-money laundering (AML) field that AML is the ally of police. The reason for this is that AML systems feed data into the police and spy service, which then use this data to inform their investigations. But this concept ignores the reality of AML, which is that it costs money for private businesses to have staff that do AML. AML rules are free to the government but very expensive to the companies they apply to, and those costs are directly passed on to customers. So whether you pay taxes for police or higher prices due to AML, you, the pub ..read more

The vast majority of scams go unreported. No one knows how many people are affected, but I've spoken to many, many people by phone who call me out of the blue looking for advice about dealing with scams. Much of the time they don't realize it's a scam. Lawyers don't normally like these kinds of calls because they're not going to result in work (and might even result in liability for them). Calls about scams are essentially the same as people calling up plumbers asking for free advice about how to do their own plumbing, or calling up auto garages to ask for advice about fixing an engine. But I ..read more

I regularly get calls from people who are the victims of Internet-based fraudsters. I have some fairly standard tips for them (see below!) but there's little that can be done once they're already a victim. Everyone's aware of the amount of online crime but few people know how these crimes happen. How do criminals manage to meet so many people? How do they reach the victims? In many of the cases they do this by placing ads on YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms. The ads lure people into the crimes by pretending to be the official sites of legitimate businesses and then they're robbed by look ..read more