The Willkie Digital Works team offers deep experience in the digital assets regulatory, policymaking and enforcement arenas. Representing both startups and established institutions, we offer a sophisticated understanding and guide our clients on the treatment of digital assets under securities and commodities laws and regulations; banking and Treasury laws and regulations; AML/KYC law; and state law matters, such as the NY BitLicense regime. Further enhancing our support and advice to our clients, many of our attorneys have held senior positions at the government regulators that interact with the digital asset community.
Our knowledge of the law and regulations is paired with our commitment to understand and support our clients’ unique business approaches in the digital asset world. We serve as a business-minded legal adviser to facilitate and foster the growth of our clients’ businesses in a regulatory compliant manner.
Experience
We are sought out to advise on a broad range of matters due to our long standing presence in the digital asset space, as well as our sophisticated, deep and broad knowledge of securities, commodities and financial laws and regulations.
We regularly advise digital asset trading platforms; financial institutions investing in digital assets and digital asset companies; token issuers; startup and mature blockchain developers; and institutions undertaking blockchain projects.
We also advise on the development of cryptospecific self-regulatory organizations and on non-fungible token (“NFT”) development and issuance.
The Digital Dollar Project
Willkie senior counsel J. Christopher “Chris” Giancarlo is the founder and director of The Digital Dollar Project (“DDP”), a multi-stakeholder initiative to advance exploration of a United States Central Bank Digital Currency (“CBDC”).
Founded in May 2021, the DDP will launch at least five pilot programs over the next year with interested stakeholders and DDP participants to measure the value of and inform the future design of a U.S. CBDC or “digital dollar.”
The DDP is served by an Advisory Group which includes economists, business leaders, technologists, lawyers, academics, consumer advocacy and human rights experts. Willkie partner Elizabeth Gray serves as a member of the Advisory Group.
Market Recognition
Willkie regularly earns accolades that demonstrate our market presence in the digital asset space. Examples of our recent accolades include:
- Recognized by Chambers FinTech 2024 in the USA FinTech Legal, FinTech Legal: Corporate, Securities & Financing and FinTech Legal: Data Protection & Cyber Security categories, where Willkie's team is commended by clients for its "deep knowledge of regulatory requirements on US investment advisers together with knowledge and expertise in [the] complex and evolving digital asset investment environment,” “significant depth and a practical approach to matters related to blockchain” and “excellent knowledge of crypto market regulation.”
- Ranked among leading fintech firms by Legal 500 US 2023, which commends the "multi-faceted" team for its "deep domain expertise" and "highly pragmatic deal skills." A client adds, “Their strength is in the size and breadth of their expertise and teams. This provides clients like myself with extremely reliable services that are effective and efficient. They always deliver in a very timely manner and their level of response time to any and all communication is unmatched.”
- Willkie senior counsel J. Christopher “Chris” Giancarlo, a former CFTC Chairman, was featured among the top 10 lawyers on the American Crypto Association’s ranking of “The Top 25 Crypto Lawyers” in the nation.
- Willkie senior counsel J. Christopher “Chris” Giancarlo was named as the sole recipient of the notable individual award for “Contribution to Regulatory Reform” at the IFLR 2020 Americas Awards.