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Hey, how you doing? Thanks for having me on.
Right on, thanks for coming on. Sorry for the mix up, but I'm glad you're here. You're calling in from Israel, yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you'd see, before we get started, do you want to give our community a quick background into yourself, your career trajectory, the work that you've done, and how you ultimately made that step into Web 3?
Yeah, sure. I've been a lawyer for the past eight years. I started off as a high tech lawyer doing capital markets in M&A initially and then moved over into more commercial roles. I was acting as the external counsel
I don't know like 60 different tech companies and when you work in tech you see all various trends in tech, ad tech, ag tech, well tech, green tech, fm tech, I don't know all different tech trends and yeah they come and go, someone works in the
than others. A lot of times it's like you could apply the same legal agreements and rationale to the different subsectors of whatever tech it is. But one that really stood out to me and wasn't just another trend
was blockchain. Starting in 2016 and then later in 2018 with the ICO bubble, started to work with a lot of crypto clients. And I was servicing more on the commercial side, but I was working very closely with the financial regulation team.
Then ultimately a year and a half ago decided to take a jump and together with my partner who is at the financial regulation team, my firm, doing exclusively crypto stuff. We decided to start a practice that focuses almost in its entire
on the blockchain and crypto sector and that's what we do today. We service crypto companies, investors, entrepreneurs, people looking to come into this space, exchanges and we take a very
different approach, I would say, than most legal practitioners in that while we're Israeli lawyers and we're based in Israel, we're in no intense purposes in Israeli law
We recognize that most of these products are decentralized and so our services are decentralized as well. We provide a broad regulatory and legal umbrella as
to the approach for structuring our company's products and their legal structures and their tax structures because we recognize that they're exposed to multiple regulatory frameworks as well.
Okay, so working in tech, you kind of saw this trend heading into and I want to get more into what you guys do for these products, but you guys got into the blockchain and cryptocurrency
sphere, what are some of the more exciting developments in this field that you've seen over the past few years, and also lead that into what you're helping a lot of these projects and products with respect to your firm?
What just clarify the question you're asking generally about blockchain or you're about asking asking about blockchain legal
I'm asking about your experience in the industry and what have been some exciting developments, what have you kind of seen over the last few years of being in Web 3, what excites you about the space?
everything is exciting. There's almost no legal products that have been tried and tested multiple times. Everybody is doing something for the first time if it's
structuring a Dow almost no two Dows are the same even commercial agreements you know blockchain just kind of like changes the way that everything is Percepted and because
because the regulatory frameworks are evolving because the companies products are evolving and because the makeup of the users is evolving as well. So what it was true for yesterday is not necessarily true for today.
constantly having to innovate and just figure out different ways to keep up to date with the space and with the products.
And even though you're based in Israel, you're serving a lot of products and builders that are outside of the country. What are some of the most common countries that builders are from?
What regions are you typically serving? So we have clients from all over Asia, a lot from Singapore, clients from all over Europe, North America, and obviously Israel as well.
And are these mainly dows or they mainly protocols? What kind of legal advice are they typically seeking from you? Sorry, you need to give me a minute. I have a crisis just to wrap it here. You can eat one second. Okay. Yeah, no worries at all.
Acti, I don't know if you're there, but I really find it interesting. We've had so many attorneys on at this point and it seems like such a
It seems like such a broad spectrum of work and activity that they and the services that they provide people on the industry, especially rapidly evolving industry.
Yeah, I agree and I think it's because of all the different rules, different countries, different projects like the easiest hinting at, you know, no two protocols, no two teams, no two demands are the same, you know, everybody wants something and it's all new. So of course, you know, it's expected. So,
I love that there are more consultants, more lawyers, more people that are getting involved. People are starting to take it seriously. And I hope they would have started sooner than 2016, 2017 when the whole ICO craze started. But it's good that we have them now on. It's going to be a tough
the rain for them as well. Not just for us. You're going forward. Sorry, I'm back. Because we got messed up in the time. He's supposed to be in an hour from now. I'm at my kids school. My kids school, they have an event going on. So I just quickly went to hide in the car, but they found me. So.
No worries at all. So that actually leads me to my next question. And you're working with different regions, different countries, all kinds of different protocols. What are some of the biggest legal challenges that you guys have faced and have you guys addressed these challenges as they've come
So like I said, it's not one thing or the other. Literally every single thing, things that would typically be mundane tasks in the non-black-chainsphere become more complicated.
Most tech companies have option plans for the employees. But if you grant your employees tokens, then you're going to give them options to tokens. And then just structuring that vis-a-vis the local tax
and implementing it as part of your corporate structure requires an entirely different approach. So everything that we've become accustomed to in the standard tech world
takes a completely different twist and requires a whole entirely different new thought processes. So nothing's simple anymore. But it's fun because it requires a lot more creativity and imagination and innovation.
Yeah, I'd imagine you certainly have to be more versatile than the average attorney. I was more curious about specific instances, like ones that you can share, where you guys have kind of been left scratching your heads in the beginning and found ways to maneuver around it and ultimately solve the problem.
I think Dow structuring is just a great example. I mean, to date.
There are very few dowels that have been structured appropriately. And even throwing around the term dow, I can't tell you how many times I've bought an NFT and then I joined a Discord and somebody's like, "Oh, welcome to the dow." And I'm like, "What?" What is a dow, right?
How many people who claim to be part of a doubt actually understand what the significance of being part of a doubt is that you in all likelihood share unlimited shared liability with everybody else is part of the doubt. And so I don't think people should
be throwing that term around so lightly and they really need to understand in a deeper level what it actually means. But when it comes to actually structuring a Dow, understanding how to do it in a fashion that will ultimately lead to a fully decentralized structure.
is a very challenging thing.
I couldn't agree more. I couldn't echo that louder. I especially during the ball run would see so many people trying to turn things in the douse that didn't need to be douse. What are in your opinion having this
experience. What are some practical use cases for DAO's? And also, what are some times where you've seen DAO, I've seen someone trying to build a DAO and you're like, why would this need to be a DAO?
I'm actually a big fan of Dows as a model if done properly so it's not that I've said so often, oh this shouldn't be a doubt. What I do see is a lot of times people wanting to issue tokens where you don't really need a token and you'll ask
the founding team. Why are we implementing token launch here? I've always wanted to have my own token. But Dow as a model for governance is actually a great use case.
I wouldn't say that there is an over-dowification of instances. So it's not an issue of, oh, you shouldn't be having a doubt, but rather is this the way you really want to structure your doubt? And is it actually serving its purpose the way you intended to?
You got it. Okay. What are your thoughts on smart contracts, right? So as smart contracts increase in popularity, would love to know what you think about.
legal questions around contract enforceability and liability and how you see the law evolving crypto law evolving to address challenges around smart contracts. I think smart contracts are great. I think that they can solve a
a lot of existing problems that we have, I think it should be implemented more. Again, these are all very broad questions. I don't have a definitive answer for you. But I think that smart contracts should be
We'll definitely be a big part of our future. It's just an issue of implementing them appropriately. So this might be another broad question, but you mentioned having preview going really broad today. You mentioned having previously worked
in M&A, curious to know in what ways you see crypto use in corporate transactions and M&A transactions? I mean I guess just as a form of payment, more and more people who have adopted crypto
as part of their products and services are also using them as a method for payment. So, I mean we see this as people paying service providers, I imagine I haven't been involved in any transactions, but I imagine that there are people who are acquiring businesses and paying for them in crypto.
Right on. Okay, so I wanted to talk a bit about regulation and regulation. I know it's also kind of a broad topic, but wanted to talk about specifically your thoughts on how a few regions and a few different
countries are regulating. So let's start with Dubai. What are your thoughts on how Dubai is regulated so far with respect to Web 3? I'm not really in a position to speak on Dubai regulations.
Okay, um, thoughts on what about Singapore or Europe? I can't speak broadly about any jurisdictional framework. I would take every, you know, each case, each company on a
case-by-case basis, learn and understand the frameworks. I'm also, I'm not licensed to practice law in any of these places. So in each and every one of these places, I have local partners that I work with. So I'm by no means an expert on Dubai or Singaporean law and I wouldn't propose to be.
Yeah, I mean I wasn't necessarily asking for like an extra to opinion it's always interesting to ask an attorney what they think about regulatory frameworks and countries that are at least making the steps or reaching that are at least making the steps to build and set up laws
that builders can adhere to, I typically compare the US to Dubai to Singapore to Europe even that's recently been trying to roll out Micah. But we can move on if you'd like to just kind of get away from regular
in different countries and regions. I asked you what we're going to talk about and you weren't really 100% clear so I'm happy to just roll with the conversation. I do kind of find it a little bit eerie, the whole speaking on speaker
I'm just standing alone on a mountain. It's very easy.
I'm happy to have a conversation with my mic on. I think I was a bit broad in my approach. I said I was looking to cover your origin story, your
So let me throw a topic out. Sure. Yeah, let's do it. I sent you a tweet and thread that I put out. I think it was middle of last week. But I think this is a great example of how a lot of stuff in this space is
new and evolving and requires innovation on many, many levels. So being involved in the crypto space and just seeing the entire spectrum of
Let's say call it the crypto community, okay, which I would say is made up of various different players. So you have the the DGENS and you have the sophisticated web three investors and you have the blockchain
entrepreneurs and you have these changes and you know there's a whole different facets of communities that are set up within crypto. So seeing them all and having had an opportunity to work with most of them, it's not all of them.
I'm always looking for ways to relate to different subsections of crypto on a deeper level.
sectors, which I worked very closely with at the beginning of last year, was the NFT sector, which was like exploding. There were literally, I don't know, I think there was at some point on OpenC, there were 400 NFT collections being launched daily.
And as you can imagine, I was working with a fair amount of those and what I was
what I was and I'm still amazed to see is that so many of these collections have never spoken to a lawyer, never taken the time to actually structure their IP to understand whether or not they own their IP.
for their users to understand what they could do with the IP. So if you're a PFP collection, for example, and you hired some dude on Fiverr or Upwork to prepare the initial artwork or part of the artwork for your collection,
If you didn't sign a formal IP assignment agreement with this guy, then your collection probably doesn't 100% belong to you. I mean, not belong to you at all. And if you bought into one of these collections and there aren't representations by the founding team in the Territory
There are clear licensing terms to what you're allowed to do with it. You may not even have the rights that you think you have. So many of these collections haven't taken the time to give thought to these things. I was trying to think how I could communicate this better to these
and NFT collectors communities. And so I launched my own NFT collection last week called Order in the Court where basically you purchase an NFT and the NFT gives you access to certainly go services.
In this case, it's geared towards the NFT creator community. If you launch the collection and you never took the time to advise the lawyer on setting up your IP and understanding
whether or not you have the appropriate agreements in place and communicating what rights your holders have so you could buy an NFT as part of the order and the court collection. And once you buy the NFT, you redeem a set of legal services for me. And after you receive these legal services, which basically bring you up to
to speed on where your IP is and in terms of transparency with your community as well, the NFT becomes a certificate of sorts that you put in your website and it says, "I took the time to advise within IP lawyer and put my IP in place." And I think that that's just
just a great example of how not only entrepreneurs but also service providers can be innovating in this space, can be take the time to understand blockchain technologies and understand the lingo in the space to communicate their products better.
Okay, so some questions. Please. First of all, they're very cool and we had a we had a query and panel around IP rights in crypto, especially around NFTs. And I from what I gathered, it was a pretty it was a pretty murky.
is part of the law, but how do you deal with IP rights for a project that is it different based on country to country? How can someone from Singapore versus someone in Malaysia versus someone in Argentina get
the same kind of legal services or rather certificate to guarantee that their NFT project belongs to them. That's a good question. So in terms of registering rights, it differs from country to country, but because typically these things are distributed on a map
As global scale, there are frameworks that are in place for internationalizing it. For example, in the trademarks regime and copyright regime, there are international frameworks that are set up where you could basically magnify the rights that you have locally on a global scale.
Not even talking about registered rights, like I'm not talking about trademark and patents. I'm talking about just having a simple licensing agreement in place. In other words, if I sat down and drew a picture right now, I just created IP. I don't have to register it anywhere. The picture that I drew is my IP.
I want to give you the right to use that IP, be it to display it on the wall in your living room or to print copies and sell it outside your local grocery or make a movie out of the character that I just drew, then
I would draw up a license agreement where I give you a license to the following rights. So and those concepts are global. The agreement that we would draft would be governed by a certain law that we would determine, but it wouldn't differ very greatly.
from the commercial side, from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. So you launch this order in the court and how many people have minted an F-T so far? 10,000. I'm just joking. Nobody.
And I think that the biggest barrier here is getting to people. So I doubt that any NFT collector in the world knows that this exists. And if the NFT creator in the world knows that this collection exists, I doubt if anybody outside of the 200 or 300 people who saw my tweet know that it exists.
But the the first step was making it easier making these services more accessible. So lawyers are seen as uptight and unrelatable. They don't understand the industry. So just by launching this product, I believe that I'm
conveying a message to NFT, DGEN creators like I get you. And not only do I get you, you don't have to call my secretary in schedule meeting with some dude in a suit on Tuesday in three months from now. You could just buy this NFT and you have immediate access to my calendar and I'll get on the call if you
tomorrow and you know you'll have the products within the end of the week and it's literally as simple as buying an NFT and open c. So really every single NFT project should be buying one of these but they don't know about it yet. Okay so what's first of all what's the minting cost?
So there are three packages. One is just a call where you advise with where we get on a call. We discussed what you've done today, where your project is now, where you're planning on going, just to understand what your issues are and what you need to do. Okay. And pointing out, okay, well,
in order for you to be compliant, you need to do A, B, C, and D, and that cost half an ETH. Then there's another one where we do the first thing. We sit down, we review your project, and then I put together, put in place all the agreements that you need with service providers, draft
You know privacy policy if needed and terms of conditions licensing terms of conditions with your community and a nice graphic for you to distribute your community that explains it Nicely, I think that's two and a half years if I remember correctly Maybe it's one and a half I can't remember I'll read them out for you. I'll read them out you have the range
maker, it's 2.5 ETH, the counselor, which is 3.5 ETH and the shark, which is 0.5 ETH. Sorry to interrupt you, I just wanted to break the break. I know, I know, I know, I know. I'm sorry. I'm very helpful. And so then, yeah, and then the 3.5, so most people don't realize that besides the IP, there's a lot, there#
issues. So one issue is IP, which is your greatest asset and if you haven't taken the time to do these things, so there might be a jeopardy because it's not yours because you didn't get it properly assigned to you or it's not your communities because you didn't appropriately assigned to them.
Now let's put IP on the side we discussed that enough. Then there's the issue of securities laws. Many, many creators and collectors come from the US. And in the US, you have a very strict securities regime that may or may not, I mean yesterday Gary Gensler of the
SCC came out and said basically every token is a security set for Bitcoin. I don't think it was specifically addressing NFTs which require a little bit more thought and attention, but there aren't so many NFT collections that could
fall within the realm of securities because of all kinds of stupid ass shit excuse my language that creators do like saying you buy my NFT and I will give you you know partial ownership to my house and other distribute royalties on a weekly basis those kind of things are not
are not smart. And if you have all kinds of things like that where you're guaranteeing that the Ft is going to be worth X and you're guaranteeing that you're going to distribute profits of Y, then you may be running the risk of being determined that you're a security. And so the next
level beyond just putting the agreements and places doing like a full-on review of all your roadmap and of all your announcements and discord and any other communications that you made broadly to your community just to make sure that you're not that you have minimum exposure there.
I love this and I wish you get some eyes on it. What are some of your thoughts about marketing this, getting exposure to it, getting them to me? I'm open for anything. I literally was out late one night and I just kind of like ran with this, did all the graphics on myself, put the
together deploy to an open sea and then put out a tweet and I don't and like I haven't done anything else besides that. But yeah, I think it's really cool. I think this is going to change the way that people offer professionals offer services to their prospective clients through an NFT marketplace
where you kind of have each package broken down. And so let's say that I was the buy-in at T. Let's say I bought the Rainmaker. And what would happen next? I would contact you. So there's unlockable content there.
And then you'd get like a calendar link and you'd schedule it's like a very open one that like supersedes everything else in my calendar and and you'd get with schedule a call I think it's like clocked for an hour, but you know I would be very generous at the time
We'd sit and we'd discuss everything about your project and then we'd walk away with you know, I'd walk away with action items that I would need to take and you know put draft agreements with whoever contributes the IP put together licensing terms and privacy policies if it's relevant and yeah
How long have you been you said you launched this how long ago last night? Yeah So it's fresh it's fresh out of the fresh. It's fresh. Yeah, I'm telling you nobody knows about it yet I Mean I can see a lot of people using this I I would like to see
Once you start to market it how fast to get bought up you said there's 10 a thousand Is it a thousand? Yeah, but it doesn't matter. I can make I can make a thousand more. It's not like there's no like resale value for these in fact I was intended to be resold because it's meant to serve as like a certificate of
compliance of sorts. Are there any other personal projects that you've worked on that you built? Like this, you're saying? Like this or like anything else in the industry that you that you personally built. I'm just curious. Yeah, I don't think so. I serve as an advisor.
I'm a advisor on the board of a lot of companies and projects. So my input has gone into the end of products, but I haven't actually done anything to start to finish myself. Are you able to share which ones? One of them used to be a source of pride. It's all theest. I worked on self-defense.
I think a lot of those in that situation would have felt the same way.
Yeah, you mentioned the so US security law securities laws You mentioned that our regime is quite strict Do you think that every token except Bitcoin? I mean it was even bundling Ethereum in there is a security
So Ethereum was never considered a security by the SEC until recently when they moved to proof of stake. I can't remember who it was. It might have been a court somewhere in the United States that came out with a statement saying that because the majority of validators
for proof of stake are in the US. So then it would be then any transaction on Ethereum would be considered as having been conducted in the US. And then it was kind of like a slippery slope from there. Like before that, ETH and BTC were like in their own
in their own realm and then like Eastlily has been more heavily scrutinized. But again, this is just Gary Gensler. He's entitled to his own opinions. I don't think just because he views everything as a security in me
So I think that if order in the court does well, you can start to broaden the legal services that you can get to the court.
that you offer through NFTs and this is, I'm just speculating here. Yeah, this is just like an experiment. And like I said, like the main point here was to be able to communicate to NFT creators by speaking their language kind of thing. Like this is easy, just by NFT. You know what I mean?
Yeah, no doubt. I mean, we we pinned to the top of the top of the Twitter space and thank you. I mean, I really do. I think that this trend is going to catch on. If people have been already been doing this, selling services by NFTs. It doesn't have to be legal services, any kind of professional financial services or
any kind of services that people want to purchase, you buy it through a JPEG and you go from there. Yeah. So, are you here on the what's up? I am saying the first one was featured here. And the first one was featured here.
I'm gonna see if we can get some eyes, some more eyes on it. Are you able to comment you'd see on the regulatory framework in Israel? It's slow and it's worse than the regulatory framework.
I mean, I guess they go hand in hand. It's slow and it's really not a very attractive place for companies to incorporate and innovate for the blockchain space, mainly because of the banking. It's also interesting we had East Tel Aviv two weeks ago.
And I learned an interesting fact that I think 30% of all crypto companies, in other words, companies that are developing products for the crypto space are Israel-based. So there's like a ton of innovation happening here generally, even more specifically for the Black
chain space, but even still it's almost impossible to off-round crypto into your Israeli bank account, which is just a nightmare. And the reason for this is because the regulators in Israel just can't get their can't agree on anything. So we have the
the AML regulator and the tax authorities and the securities authority and the overseer of the banks all have their own opinion and they can't seem to co-exist with one another.
Every single crypto conference here in Israel where all the regulators are invited to take part in a panel like a huge fighter rubs with you know Everybody everybody getting angry at the banks and saying it's not fair Why can't we why can't we bank here and the banks say what do you want from me the tax authorities are telling me this the AML authorities tell me
I mean that security started something saying and then I just like gets into this whole fist fight. It's really quite entertaining actually. But it's very very very frustrating. Especially since there's such a big crypto space here and there's so much innovation happening for crypto here. But banking is
I understand the banks as well. The banks say, "We're four profit entities. We don't want to start messing with your crypto if we're going to get massive fines from the regulators tomorrow." So I don't blame them. I just think it's unfortunate that we can't I'll be friends with them.
Yeah, no doubt it's just curious are these are these disagreements for lack of a better term televised on on and can people actually watch this happening in a real time? No, it's more like Israel like I said very active in the election spaces. There's like crypto events happening weekly
And it's always the same guy show up. And it's the same representative from the regulators and the same, you know, there's like a forum that represents all the blockchain technology companies and the entrepreneurs. Everybody comes
So we have the same conversations. It's good fun. I'm going to want tomorrow actually. I don't believe it until advised. No doubt. Okay. So Israel still
like the US needs to get it together and I know that Israel is a massive tech hub, juggernaut every tech hub, so or at least Tel Aviv is and so yeah quite a few crypto enthusiasts out there. Yes, sorry go ahead
No, no, it is your absolutely right. It's a huge tech hub and crypto hub and tons of innovation happening here. Just not in the way of banking. I gotta drop off in four minutes. I'm sorry. No worries at all. It's honestly been a pleasure having you, man.
I'm getting my social media team to retweet this and get some ice on it. We want to blow this up for you because I think it's a really cool service. I think that this is going to catch on, right, as people's lives become more and more software-based, as people spend
more time online as people get more into crypto as they never will be in my opinion. Buying as I echoed before buying services legal services via an NFT at PFP or any other kind of professional services via PFP is going to become a trend. So it's cool to see you with it.
trailblazer and we're really happy to get some eyes on it. Thank you. Yeah, of course. Yeah, you'd see if you ever want to come back and talk about something more specific, I'm happy to do that. We can talk in DMs and we can go from there, but you're welcome on our podium anytime. Thank you so much.
So much. I appreciate the invite and I appreciate the opportunity to launch my NFT collection. Yeah, I hope it's really well. I thank you. I appreciate that and hopefully we'll have opportunities to speak in the future.
Absolutely. All right. Take care, man. Have a great time. Take care. Thank you so much. Bye-bye. Whalecoin talk community. That was you'd see Hammer. Really enjoyed that one. Remember that everything you hear on these broadcasts meant for educational purposes only. Nothing is financial advice. So be safe out there and we'll see you all later today. Bye-bye.