It is almost impossible to scan the news without seeing multiple headlines relating to cryptocurrency and other digital assets. Perhaps the definitive sign that crypto for the masses has arrived and is here to stay is the fact that Bitcoin and Dogecoin whisperer, Elon Musk, recently hosted Saturday Night Live, which also parodied NFTs. Earlier this year, Tesla announced it was investing $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, adding momentum to a wave of corporate and institutional investments in cryptocurrencies.
In this new column for Reuters Legal, Shearman & Sterling partner Donna Parisi gives a high-level overview of the regulatory landscape faced by companies and investors, with a spotlight on the rules and regulatory bodies that companies need to be aware of when entering the digital asset space for the first time.
This is the first in a series of columns that Donna will write for Reuters on the topic of crypto and digital assets.
Increasingly, cryptocurrency and digital assets are looking less and less like a trend that will fall out of fashion and more like an important part of the future of finance. China is aggressively pushing its new Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), the digital Yuan, and the UK and US are actively exploring their own CBDC initiatives. In the private sector, PayPal will soon allow customers to pay using cryptocurrency at more than 29 million online stores, and many major banks are rolling out crypto wallets and offering digital asset options to their customers. Whether as a store of value, medium of exchange, or digital representation of a physical asset, the possibilities presented by digital assets for reimagining the financial system, who has access and how they participate, is wide open.