The Blockchain Lawyer You Didn’t Know You Needed
I don’t know very much about law, which explains why I’m not a lawyer, but I do know the basic concepts — things like how you shouldn’t murder, steal, or hide webcams in Starbucks bathrooms.
“If a cop ever questions you, don’t say anything except to ask for a lawyer.” — my mom
Most people will go through life without ever breaking the criminal code. People don’t need to be told not to kill/hurt/steal from other people, usually, and those that do usually know what they’re doing.
Blockchain technology is still relatively new, so new that while many people are aware of it, most still don’t know how it works and among those who do even fewer are aware of the laws and litigation surrounding it.
The operations team behind Dogecon are all invested in the Vancouver Blockchain community in some way, and while we wanted to accept cryptocurrency for our event (it’d be pretty weird if we didn’t — it’d be like throwing a pie convention where you’re not allowed to bring any pies) we knew it would be a tangled challenge at times.
And because we enjoy increasing levels of difficulty we’re also a non-profit, accepting sponsorships in the form of cryptocurrency. Then everyone needs to put this shit on their taxes. If that didn’t give you an aneurysm then you probably know more than me, or you’re someone who files their taxes.
“If I found out she(me) talked to the cops I would disown her.” — also my mom
This is where Samuel Osei came in, a friend of the blockchain community and trail blazing lawyer who has decided to tackle a very new, constantly shifting plane in the world of contracts and finance. In some ways this is a massive benefit, to Samuel Osei and to everyone, because he has the opportunity to shape the community by getting involved at the start. It certainly helps that, in all our engagements with him, Mr. Osei’s practice and perspective has been directed by clear communication and just plain good sense.
“What are you doing? That sounds illegal”
“It’s not illegal”
“Well, just remember…”
“Don’t talk to the cops”
“Damn straight”
- A conversation with my mom, who is a lawyer
Mr. Osei has been indispensable when it comes to overseeing our contracts and has donated his time to helping us over various legal hurdles. His efforts to help people better understand blockchain and the law shows in the blog he maintains, which contains clear and detailed information on what can sometimes be a confusing subject. I can certainly appreciate the transparency in this, from someone who can bill by the hour just to answer questions about the law.
Chelsea Palmer, the team member who first connected us with Mr. Osei, highlighted a great analogy she overheard: lawyers do for human systems what bug testers do for software code. In our meetings with Samuel and his colleague Tea Kavazovic, some of the most valuable outcomes haven’t been purely legal affirmations — instead, it’s been a case of him flagging larger concepts we never would have even thought of. Such consultations are valuable on a meta-analytic level: no matter how advanced our robots and smart contracts might get, we’ll always need the sharp good sense of brilliant legal minds.
Similarly, some logistical questions may never occur to most people, things like “If I donate five thousand Dogecoin to the feline heir of my great-aunt’s estate, managed by an AI based on the character Frodo from Lord of the Rings, can I claim that as a medical expense?” but for when that happens we are glad to have experts who can handle it.
For everything else, just don’t talk to the police.
