Keyword: Other Regulatory Issues (tax, anti-money laundering, OFAC, and antitrust)

We’ve previously written that the Token Taxonomy Act first introduced to Congress by Representatives Warren Davidson (R-OH) and Darren Soto (D-FL) on December 20, 2018, was a welcome legislative initiative designed to provide a regulatory “light touch” to the burgeoning digital asset industry. The bill expired, however, with the termination of the 115^th Congress, leaving open the question of what any future blockchain regulatory proposals, would look like. The industry’s questions were answered on April 9, 2019 when Representatives Davidson and Soto introduced the Digital Taxonomy Act of 2019 (DTA) and the Token Taxonomy Act of 2019 (TTA) to the 116^th Congress. The DTA and TTA represent expanded efforts to clarify regulation and spur blockchain innovation in the United States.

According to Representatives Davidson and Soto, the DTA is meant to add jurisdictional certainty to efforts to combat fraudulent behavior in the digital asset industry. As such, the DTA grants the FTC $25,000,000 and orders it to prepare reports on its efforts to combat fraud and deceptive behavior. The DTA also specifically carves out from its purview the authority of the CFTC to regulate digital assets as commodities subject to the Commodities Exchange Act.

The 2019 TTA, with the backing of four bipartisan representatives in addition to Davidson and Soto, is similar to last year’s model. Besides defining digital assets and exempting them from certain securities law requirements, the 2019 TTA maintains proposals to amend the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 and the Investment Company Act of 1940 so that certain regulated entities can hold digital assets. Like the 2018 version of the TTA, the 2019 TTA would also allow the sale of digital assets to qualify for the benefits of Internal Revenue Code Section 1031 like-kind exchange provisions and for the first $600 dollars of profit from digital asset sales to be tax-free.

The TTA also has important updates. The most prominent change is the definition of a “digital asset.” As we’ve previously discussed, the 2018 version of the TTA required that a digital asset’s transaction history could not be “materially altered by a single person or group of persons under common control” to qualify for exemption from securities laws. Because of the unavoidable possibility of a 51% attack, which would alter a token’s transaction history, the language created the possibility that proof of work- and proof of stake-based tokens would not be eligible for regulatory relief, thus limiting the bill’s benefits.

In the re-proposed TTA, however, the newly proposed language of Section 2(a)(20)(B)(ii) requires that the transaction history, still recorded in a mathematically verifiable process, “resist modification or tampering by any single person or group of persons under common control.” Thus, any digital asset, even those subject to 51% attacks, may be exempt from certain securities law requirements, although the language appears to require that a governance or security system underline the token’s consensus system.

Another important update is the TTA’s proposed preemption of state regulation of the digital asset industry by federal authorities. While the TTA would still permit states to retain antifraud regulatory authority, it largely strips states’ rights to regulate digital assets as securities. Representative Davidson’s press release on the bill specifically cites the “onerous” requirements of the New York BitLicense regulatory regime as a reason for the inclusion of this provision.

Critics have been quick to point out that the bills, while well intentioned, leave many unanswered questions and therefore may not provide the regulatory certainty the bills’ authors hope to effect. And even a perfect bill would face an uphill battle in getting enacted these days. But the digital asset industry should nonetheless take comfort in the growing contingent of legislators who take seriously the imperative to balance consumer protection and blockchain innovation.

As we’ve previously written, the Token Taxonomy Act (TTA) is an ambitious and potentially impactful piece of legislation that, by exempting digital tokens from the securities laws, might remove regulatory inhibitions from the maturing digital token industry. The bill is not without fault, however. As it stands, the language of the bill requiring that a digital token’s consensus be inalterable is ambiguously written and the SEC could use a strict interpretation to preclude many digital assets from qualifying as digital tokens.

The proposed additional language of Section 2(a)(20)(B) of the Securities Act of 1933 reads that to qualify for the exemption, a digital token:

(i) must be recorded in a distributed, digital ledger or digital data structure in which consensus is achieved through a mathematically verifiable process; and

(ii) after consensus is reached, cannot be materially altered by a single person or group of persons under common control.

In other words, a digital token must use an inalterable and objectively verifiable process. This language is designed to include in the definition only those digital tokens that are or will be in widespread enough use so that no one single party can influence the nature of the outstanding tokens in a way that adversely affects digital token holders.

The proposed language creates the possibility that the SEC could strictly apply the requirement that a token “cannot” be materially altered. As it stands, proof-of-work and even proof-of-stake digital assets are susceptible to a 51% attack, which could alter the digital token’s consensus. “Proof-of-work” and “proof-of-stake” refer to different systems used to verify and process transactions on a blockchain.

A “51% attack” is an event in which a party takes control of the requisite computer power underlying a token’s blockchain such that the party can control the token platform’s operation. Typically, a party seeking such control needs to possess 51% of the outstanding tokens, but the threshold amount can be lower for individual digital assets. A party that has successfully executed a 51% attack can change the ledger history so that it can, for example, double-spend tokens.

The SEC could negate the potential application of the TTA because the recent 51% attack against Ethereum Classic shows that the risk of attack against proof-of-work digital assets, especially those with a low market capitalization, is real. And although the proof-of-stake system makes a 51% attack prohibitively expensive, the SEC could justifiably claim that it is theoretically possible. An irrational, non-economic actor could still stage a 51% attack against a proof-of-stake digital asset with an intent to destroy it rather than to make profit.

In the end, the ambiguity in the bill’s language might not have a deleterious effect. It is hoped that a regulator would not strictly interpret the bill’s language to exclude the intended beneficiaries because of a hypothetical possibility of a 51% attack. So, too, the digital asset industry will likely continue to innovate new and more secure protocols that could potentially eliminate the threat of 51% attacks, making potential exclusion from the bill’s benefits a moot point. Nonetheless, as the TTA undergoes revision, the potential ambiguity in the proposed language should be remedied.