Crypto Will Keep Feeling the Heat on the Legal Front in 2023

A new year, a new crypto-friendly US president, and the imminent departure of Gary Gensler.

But crypto will keep feeling the heat on the legal front for some time to come — the industry’s court docket is chock-a-block with pending cases.

Several precedent-setting proceedings in 2025 could define new rules for crypto sectors, as Aleks Gilbert reported.

Lido DAO faces test

A California plaintiff’s lawsuit against Lido DAO, for instance, alleges that the DeFi giant sold unregistered securities in the form of its governance token.

The investor also sued the venture capitalist firms backing the staking firm, including Andreessen Horowitz and Paradigm. Lido and the VCs have denied the allegations.

The case is testing whether VCs who hold loads of governance tokens actually control the decentralised autonomous organisation.

The argument challenges the idea that DAOs are controlled by an array of members, and the judge overseeing the litigation has already found this argument credible when he dismissed the respondents’ effort to get the case tossed.

Meanwhile, the future of crypto privacy is at stake in the looming prosecution of Roman Storm, the Tornado Cash co-founder charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and with violating US sanctions.

Not guilty plea

Storm has pleaded not guilty. His case has become a cause célèbre for privacy advocates who contend the government is not respecting the nature of automated smart contracts at the heart of decentralised finance.

Even though a US appellate court recently agreed with that argument, it didn’t work for Storm’s fellow dev, Alexey Pertsev. In May, a Dutch court convicted Pertsev, and he was sentenced to a five year-prison term.

Another high-profile crypto defendant landed in the US in December to face trial: Do Kwon, the onetime DeFi mogul who was captured in Montenegro in 2023 after going underground for months.

Charged with fraud in connection with the $40 billion collapse of Terraform Labs more than two years ago, Kwon was extradited to the US from Montenegro in December.

Do Kwon pleaded not guilty in federal court in New York last week, Ben Weiss reported.

With Bitcoin surging and Donald Trump poised to usher in a relaxed regulatory climate, Do Kwon’s trial will be a jarring flashback to the dark days of 2022.

This is when Terra’s failure was followed by that of a number of big platforms, including Celsius and FTX.

In December, Celsius co-founder Alex Mashinsky pleaded guilty in the same court that will hear Do Kwon’s case.

Edward Robinson is the story editor for DL News. Contact the author at ed@dlnews.com.