In this episode of Block and Order, hosts Kyle and Moish chat with professors Kara Bruce, Chris Odinet, and Andrea Tosato about how bankruptcy law fits into the world of crypto and DAOs. They break down the unique legal challenges these decentralized groups face when things go south financially, why legal structure really matters, and how traditional bankruptcy rules do—or don’t—apply in the Web3 space. The professors also share insights from their research and talk about what recent crypto bankruptcies can teach anyone working in this space.

Be sure to check out the Bankrupt Crypto Organizations paper!

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Kara Bruce | University of North Carolina School of Law
Chris Odinet | Texas A&M School of Law
Andrea Tosato | SMU Dedman School of Law

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Chapter Markers:

00:00:00 Welcome to Block and Order
00:03:24 Welcome to our guests (Kara Bruce, Chris Odinet, Andrea Tosato)
00:04:18 What motivated you to write about bankrupt crypto organizations?
00:13:06 From a bankruptcy perspective, how do you approach amorphous or informally structured organizations compared to corporations with clear legal identities?
00:20:59 Given the structure of something like Ooki DAO, would a bankruptcy court treat it as a general partnership and hold individual participants severally liable for claims, or is there precedent suggesting a different approach?
00:29:39 When a DAO grounded in crypto-anarchist values faces financial distress or litigation, is it inevitable that it must compromise those ideals by pursuing bankruptcy, or can it proactively adopt a legal structure that balances its philosophical roots with practical exit strategies?
00:44:46 Can DAOs implement on-chain fraud detection and dispute mechanisms—like binding arbitration—as a credible alternative to bankruptcy, or do off-chain legal tools like involuntary bankruptcy and lawsuits remain unavoidable when not all parties consent?
00:51:08 How should crypto users think about bankruptcy given all that we’ve learned over the past, you know, call it five years, with the unexpected interaction of blockchain and US Courts?
01:03:42 Thank you to our guests
01:05:25 Closing remarks

Watch or listen to the podcast here:

   

Transcript:

**This transcript has been prepared automatically by AI and may contain inaccuracies**

Kyle Lawrence [00:00:10]:
Welcome to Block and Order, the show that explores the legal issues facing the world of Web3 and beyond. I’m Kyle Lawrence and with me as always. I bet he would file bankruptcy to get out of paying the bill for dinner. Mr. Moish Peltz.

Moish Peltz [00:00:23]:
Only involuntarily, Kyle.

Kyle Lawrence [00:00:24]:
Well, if you file for bankruptcy, I can’t send you the Venmo request to pay me. Is that true?

Moish Peltz [00:00:31]:
If I offer, there’s just an automatic stay. You can send the request, but I’m not going to pay you.

Kyle Lawrence [00:00:36]:
I can’t do anything beyond that. I can’t show up at your door and bang on. Well, Moish, we had a very fascinating interview with three true scholars. You know, whenever we talk to people who are at that level, I always feel like my student had like a shrink in my chair.

Moish Peltz [00:00:54]:
I feel like I’m the kid who didn’t do the homework in class. It’s a little, little frightening.

Kyle Lawrence [00:00:59]:
There’s definitely an element of that. Although I was very proud of myself for my 341 reference which wasn’t completely right, but it is a part of the. It’s been 20 years.

Moish Peltz [00:01:08]:
You, you did say a section of the bankruptcy code. I don’t think it was the right section, but you definitely named a section and we’ll, you know, props for that.

Kyle Lawrence [00:01:17]:
Yeah, thank you. I get a CLE credit for that. Well, for those tuning in, we had, we were very lucky to have Kara Bruce, Chris Odinet and Andrea Tosato who are bankruptcy professors and just had a really illuminating discussion about, you know, applying their expertise to the world of crypto and DAOs and innovation in tech and really wonderful discussion. Moish, what’d you think about it?

Moish Peltz [00:01:41]:
Yeah, it was fascinating. And if you’re not, you may want to read their article. It’s called Bankrupt Crypto Organizations. It’s available on SSRN that they published which, which did the rounds on Twitter a few months ago. And what caught our attention and got them to invite them on. Super fascinating analysis of how DAOs interface with bankruptcy law, both in reality and in hypotheticals. And it ties into a lot of the things we talked about on the show previously, including with one of the colleagues of, I believe Andreas is we had talked about just private law and how contract law might apply and we’ve talked about that several times in our show. And so I thought it was really fascinating specifically about bankruptcy and all the good things that come with bankruptcy and all the either bad or unpredictable things that are the outcome of it.

Moish Peltz [00:02:39]:
So wide ranging Bankruptcy conversation.

Kyle Lawrence [00:02:42]:
I really enjoyed the part where we talked about how people who form DAOs, in part, they say, well, we’re decentralized. You know, we’re not. I have no fiduciary responsibility. But then when things go awry, it’s like, I’d really like to take advantage of bankruptcy protections. Well, you know, you kind of have to land on one side of the fence there.

Moish Peltz [00:02:59]:
I just want to be a decentralized smart contract. But it’d be really cool if I could have the automatic stay when things go south.

Kyle Lawrence [00:03:06]:
Yeah, you can’t pick and choose. The laws are not a la carte. Sorry, folks. Well, without further ado, let’s turn it over to our conversation with Kara, Chris, and Andrea. Enjoy, everybody. Joining us on Block and Order today, we have a very special trio of guests. I think this is the most guest we’ve ever had at one time. Happily joining us today we have Kara Bruce, Chris Odinet, and Andrea Tosato.

Kyle Lawrence [00:03:37]:
Thanks, everybody.

Kara Bruce [00:03:38]:
Thanks for having us.

Chris Odinet [00:03:39]:
Thanks for having us.

Kyle Lawrence [00:03:41]:
Thanks for joining us. We value everybody’s time, and we’re really thrilled to have you on Block and Order. So what’s going on in the world today, guys? I haven’t looked at my portfolio in a couple hours. Everything okay?

Kara Bruce [00:03:54]:
I find it best not to look.

Kyle Lawrence [00:03:56]:
I agree.

Andrea Tosato [00:04:02]:
Yesterday was. Everybody was expecting yesterday to be a disaster, and it kind of went all right. And today it’s doing the opposite.

Chris Odinet [00:04:09]:
Yeah. I just pulled up the New York Times and markets slide again in the afternoon. Slump, slump as trade tensions escalate.

Moish Peltz [00:04:17]:
Well, there you go. Okay, well, it’s funny because you had posted, I think this is back in January when we first reached out to you, an article about bankrupt crypto organizations. And we thought, well, it’s kind of a sleepy topic. No one’s really thinking about bankruptcies right now. I don’t know if that’s changed, you know, the past week or so, but I think it’s actually become a more timely topic topic. And certainly in our practice, we’ve, we’ve been involved in a number of the. The headline crypto bankruptcies in one way or another. And so, you know, I’m curious, you know, how the three of you got together and decided to, to write on this topic and, and what motivated that?

Chris Odinet [00:04:56]:
Huh? That’s a. Now that’s like a couple years old of a story I’ll, I’ll give a swing at. At the origin story. So the three of us are law professors. I’m at Texas A and M University. Kara’s at The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. And Andrea is at SMU in Dallas. And we all sort of bring a little bit of commercial law to the table.

Chris Odinet [00:05:20]:
I do a lot of, like, kind of property law and commercial law. Kara is commercial law and like a true bankruptcy scholar, and Andrea is commercial law. But he’s also really like our technologist. Like, he knows the distributed ledger cryptography technology the best. So we got together some years ago to write a paper around the time that stablecoins were really having like, their first kind of heyday. And there was a lot of discussion around stablecoins and what they could do. We wrote a paper together and to give you, like, an idea of what was going on around the time this would be like the Terra Luna collapse. And we explored what would happen to customers, if you will, of a stablecoin issuer across a couple of different kinds of stablecoin issuers if there was to be a bankruptcy.

Chris Odinet [00:06:13]:
So, like, redemption rights in the context of stablecoins that give something like that with reserves. So we wrote about that. It won an award on commercial law. And that’s just turned into continual conversations about crypto and bankruptcy and custody and what it means to hold crypto with intermediaries in this world that is at least like, as an origin story, heralded as being very decentralized. And eventually that kind of brought us full circle to write about crypto organizations, decentralized, autonomous organizations, and thinking about what it would look like if they faced insolvency and whether bankruptcy would make sense for them, whether they would choose bankruptcy and what they would have to do if they decided that they wanted to. And then ways, lastly, bankruptcies might come for them whether they like it or not. Does that. Do you think that the both of you, do you think that’s a fair story?

Kara Bruce [00:07:13]:
I do. I do. The only thing I’d add is we started, you know, we had a pretty good draft of the article, I think, when the Terra Luna situation started unfolding. So that summer was just trying to catch up with the. The markets and companies were filing for. For bankruptcy. So it was a bit of a wild ride. But I think, yeah, what.

Kara Bruce [00:07:36]:
What we try to bring is the. The when. When markets are great and everybody’s making money and. And feeling good. What does it look like when the page turns or if the page turns? That’s, I think, where. Where we like to spend some time.

Andrea Tosato [00:07:53]:
But one thing that I would add is this a lot of the conversation surrounding crypto in general. So it’s not just stablecoins it’s not just DAO. A lot of the conversation surrounding crypto from the legal perspective is really focused on regulation. So it’s the SEC is the CFTC and I don’t have a money, licensing and even all the stuff that is going on now in Congress, that’s the angle. So the angle is, well, what about this activity? Should it be allowed? Should it be in some way confined? And it’s really the relationship between the technology, the industry participants and the state. Right? That’s the big conversation. The three of us look at it from a completely different perspective that we think is really important and I think ultimately turns out to be very important, but is often overlooked. And that is like the private law side of it.

Andrea Tosato [00:08:54]:
That is to say, what about the rights and obligations of those who interact? So with stablecoins, our angle was, well, we’re not really interested whether, you know, you need a bank charter, if you need a license from this state or that state. We were more interested in, okay, when someone actually issues this stablecoin and then someone has it, what’s the relationship there? So when you go and try to redeem, what happens if they say no? And what if you have a stablecoin but it’s something like MakerDAO and there’s actually nobody on the other side because it’s algorithmic and for whatever reason, the smart contract blows up. That was what we were interested in. And sort of at the end of the line, there is bankruptcy, right? So to some extent it’s the right to send obligations for some time, but if, if things really go wrong, it’s bankruptcy. And so that was the story when we did stablecoins. And then the three of us had a lot of fun, I think, writing that. And then there was a little bit of time in between. And then we got the opportunity to get together and work on DAOs.

Andrea Tosato [00:10:01]:
And it was a. You know, we thought, yeah, this, this could be fun. Let’s, let’s do the same thing again. Let’s look at the private law side of it and what happens in bankruptcy.

Chris Odinet [00:10:12]:
And I’ll just add one little thing to that. When we first sat down to write that paper, it was really just going to be a short chapter that was part of a larger edited volume where a bunch of different professors were writing pieces having to do with DAOs. Like some people were doing corporate governance. Like they asked us to do the bankruptcy piece, which we did. But as we wrote the chapter which was constrained and how long it could be, we thought to ourselves, there’s like a whole lot more to say here. We also found that there really wasn’t a ton of good descriptive work on DAOs. Like, you know, lots of things out there will say like, this is what a DAO is. But as we sort of really wrote the paper, like, gosh, DAOs are really heterogeneous.

Chris Odinet [00:10:54]:
They do different things, they’re organized in different ways. There’s not like a real quintessential, like you could say, like, oh, what does a limited liability company do? Like, here’s like a quintessential definition. There really wasn’t quite like a perfectly crystallizable way to describe DAOs. So a big part of the paper was like, let’s really talk about DAOs, but let’s categorize them by kind of their bankruptcy features, like, what kind of creditors do they have and how do they make their decisions? Which is like how they would make decisions in bankruptcy business, like this. And then we get into the, okay, like, how would they fare in bankruptcy? And then at the end of the paper, it’s, what if they tried to do a little bankruptcy on chain themselves? Which is the kind of thought experiment at the end.

Andrea Tosato [00:11:38]:
As Chris was saying. I think that was when we decided to really start exploring DAOs and bankruptcy. That was the, the starting point was, okay, there’s a ton of literature out there, but what is it about? And so there was some stuff on economics and again, the tokenomics of a DAO, and then there was stuff about organizations and voting mechanisms, quadratic voting and the committees and all this kind of stuff. And it’s all super interesting, especially if you’re looking at DAOs at an experiment or maybe you’re thinking about joining one or setting one up, that was all good and well, but again, from the perspective of what we’re doing, again, trying to understand rights and obligations of those who participate and how this would play out in bankruptcy, There was so very little right out there. And so the, the first part one of the paper was really, okay, well, let’s, let’s dig in and, and try to understand. But through this lens, through the lens of in law and looking downfield from the perspective of bankruptcy, how do you analyze DAOs? How do you organize them? How do you look at this landscape and make sense of it?

Kyle Lawrence [00:13:05]:
That’s a great point. From a bankruptcy perspective, one of the things that I wondered about, as Moish and I have represented a lot of these types of organizations, and they come in many forms, as Chris, you were talking about, some of them can have a formal corporate structure. We’ve seen ones that have the unincorporated nonprofit association wrapper around it, and we’ve seen others that have nothing. So from a bankruptcy perspective, you have a corporation that’s filing bankruptcy or that’s going back. That’s easy. But how do you approach these amorphous structures that don’t have these targets on their back, you know, proverbial targets, as you were saying? So if you can shed some light on that, that’d be great.

Andrea Tosato [00:13:47]:
Yeah. So we encountered this pretty, pretty early on. I think that where we started from was trying to make sense of what we call the intellectual foundations of DAOs, because as we investigated, we found that, yes, there was great diversity, great heterogeneity, but also there was a. A big chunk of cases in which the DAO founders, like the members of the DAO, just didn’t engage, just straight up. They chose more often than not consciously to just not engage with the legal dimension of what they were doing. And so we thought, well, you know, let’s dig a little bit deeper. Let’s not just say, oh, you know, these are just people who don’t care. This is just a yolo.

Andrea Tosato [00:14:43]:
And we thought, no, you know, there’s probably more to this. And so we started digging on, like, trying to understand what the intellectual foundations of DAO are, of DAOs are. And to some extent, there’s a lot of commonality with the intellectual foundations of blockchain bitcoin. So cyberpunks for crypto anarchists. So there’s obviously. Right, there’s. There’s a common tree there from which DAOs come out, but there’s also some of it that is a bit unique. And so we were trying to understand where these ideas for DAOs come from.

Andrea Tosato [00:15:20]:
And we looked at it first in organization theory, and you find that this idea of organizations that don’t have a formalized structure, organization where there is no delegation of powers, organizations in which there is a high degree of information. People have been theorizing and thinking about this for quite some time. It’s not like a thing that suddenly came out in, I don’t know, 2010 after Bitcoin started. And equally also like in corporate law, same thing. People have been thinking how you could sit in conventional corporate law, a corporate entity that, again, doesn’t necessarily have the usual structures, the board of directors and all that. And then you. You have this, and then you mix in the. The cyberpunks, the crypto anarchists, those who say, we want to find a way to set up organizations that exist outside of Conventional state rules.

Andrea Tosato [00:16:25]:
We want to be able to participate, to collaborate, but complete privacy. We want to be able to participate, to collaborate, but direct democracy, no delegation of powers. We don’t want to have a CEO, we don’t want to have a board of directors.

Kyle Lawrence [00:16:42]:
Right.

Andrea Tosato [00:16:43]:
And so when, when we started reading all of that, it was a bit like, aha. Okay, okay, so now I get it. Because of course our aim was not to, you know, try to understand how a DAO that calls itself a DAO, but really is an LLC or is a standard corporation. But again, you know, it’s fancy right now to be a DAO. They call themselves a DAO, but everything else looks like a. That’s not what interested us. What really draw attention was the DAOs that really live by the code, right? So it’s those people who are really into these cyberpunks, crypto anarchist ideas. And those people, going back to your question, those people don’t engage.

Andrea Tosato [00:17:32]:
Those are not the people who are going to say, well, we’re going to do a DAO, but first of all, let’s go to Delaware. First of all, day one, let’s go to Delaware and set up a nice LLC and maybe we can get some experienced people on the board. That’s. That’s not it. Right. And it’s also not interesting because all of that will play out like any other bankruptcy. And so that was one of the first questions. How do you deal with a DAO maybe that wants to be for profit? So they, they want to pull tokens, they want to have some kind of voting mechanism and then decide and do trading or maybe invest in other smart contract based projects or something like this.

Andrea Tosato [00:18:15]:
But again, they just fire up a smart contract and they don’t do the llc, they don’t do anything. What if this kind of DAO then suddenly either decided to file for bankruptcy or more realistically was, was forced into bankruptcy by, by creditors. And it was, I think that when, when the three of us were talking about this, it almost became like a joke because it’s one of those things that you can summarize as, you know, life comes at you fast, right? So maybe the participants in the DAOs or the founders of the DAO, they’re not interested engaging with the law, they just want to do their DAO thing. But what we arrived at, and this is really the story of Ooki DAO and the BZX. Even if you don’t want the law, the law comes for you. So you can say, you know, your law doesn’t Apply to us and you can try evading it. But as was that case, that was a group of people who got together, started up a DAO, put some tokens in it, put some value in it, did some stuff. Eventually they landed up in court because they were scams.

Andrea Tosato [00:19:34]:
Some of the people who lost tokens effectively brought suit. The court has to look at this DAO, and on one hand you’ve got the DAO participants saying, we’re completely different. Your laws don’t apply to us. And the court kind of looks at them and says, nah, nah, you guys are just an organization for profit. You haven’t chosen a corporate form. You guys are a general partnership. And all of you participants in there, you’re fully.

Kyle Lawrence [00:20:03]:
Ouch.

Andrea Tosato [00:20:04]:
You’re fully liable.

Moish Peltz [00:20:06]:
Yeah, right.

Andrea Tosato [00:20:07]:
And this was like one of those first, it’s in the paper. This is like one of those things that the, I think people who are in the DLT community were aware of, you know, when the, when that case came through in California, was that we’re talking about it, people involved in DAOs saying, this is so unfair. But that’s the world we live in, right?

Andrea Tosato [00:20:30]:
The world we live in.

Andrea Tosato [00:20:31]:
You put, you join, you get into an organization, you decide that you’re going to make it for profit. You can call it a DAO, and it’s a very interesting experiment, but it’s going to be treated as a general partnership, and it’s going to be brought into that framework when you get in bankruptcy.

Kyle Lawrence [00:20:49]:
Yeah. Saying the laws don’t apply to you is kind of a specious argument. I drive down the road if nobody else is on the road. Speed limits are still a thing.

Andrea Tosato [00:20:58]:
Yeah.

Moish Peltz [00:20:59]:
So being. Being familiar with Ooki DAO, how would a bankruptcy court approach that question? You know, would it just be the same similar idea. This is a general partnership. All the general partners are fully, you know, severally liable up to whatever liability they may have. I’m bankruptcy court, I’m coming in, I’m analyzing. You know, there’s so much in assets, there’s so much in creditor claims, like, okay, let’s just start pulling money away from the founders because they’re individually liable up to. Is that how a bankruptcy court would. Would analyze that question, or do we have examples that you.

Kara Bruce [00:21:34]:
Yeah, fundamentally, yeah. The bankruptcy system takes state law rights and state law entities as they find them, or I should say non bankruptcy law, and puts a procedural framework on top of it. And so what that means is what your corporate form would be under applicable law is kind of what you’re bringing to the bankruptcy system. So there are a lot of interpretive questions about how bankruptcy maps onto these entities. Just like we saw in the crypto bankruptcies in 2002 and 22 and 23. We have to figure out kind of what characteristic to give to DAOs if they do choose to file. And a threshold question here is, are they even eligible for bankruptcy? Because the way that the Bankruptcy Code is structured, they’re looking for individuals or corporations, and a DAO may not fit, or partnerships may not fit in one of those categories. But I’m pretty confident, based on the way that courts have analyzed other situations where it’s a type of entity that doesn’t fit, courts will basically say, do you need bankruptcy? We’ll kind of move those categories to find a way for bankruptcy law to apply.

Kara Bruce [00:23:03]:
So we get into, in a little bit of the paper that eligibility would be a threshold question, but it’s one, I think that courts would resolve to find that the DAO, if they had a need for bankruptcy, would, would be eligible to, to come in. And we saw that happen. Actually, there is one DAO that has filed for bankruptcy relief. It’s a receivership in the British Virgin Islands with an associated U.S. bankruptcy case. And the court did decide that they qualified as a person, which is what the Bankruptcy Code requires. So I think they’re going to get in. And after that, it’s anyone’s guess.

Kara Bruce [00:23:49]:
I think, right, they could get in, but kind of how these bankruptcy cases would unfold. I think there’s a lot of open questions and a lot have to do with the management and decision making structures of the DAOs.

Kyle Lawrence [00:24:05]:
Chris, anything to jump in before we move on to the. You don’t mean to put it on the spot.

Chris Odinet [00:24:10]:
I can’t add anything that Andrea and Kara have not.

Kyle Lawrence [00:24:14]:
Perfect. Karen and Andrea, great job.

Andrea Tosato [00:24:16]:
But really, I think that beyond the threshold question, what we started seeing pretty early on is this tension between bankruptcy on one side and again, DAOs based on what their intellectual foundations are. Again, when not, not again, the pretend DAOs, but the actual real DAOs. So if on one hand you’ve got this organization that really structures itself as decentralized, no formal delegation of powers, no organization in which someone can speak for someone, can act for the organization, because that’s the desire of, again, the members of the DAOs, because they are intellectually vested in this model of collaboration without a hierarchy, without a structure that is potentially, you know, pseudonymous or even anonymous, all of this.

Andrea Tosato [00:25:18]:
Then the bankruptcy thing becomes very complicated. Especially if the DAO wanted to sort of seek the shelter of bankruptcy. Because again, they want to take advantage of the protection, the reprieve or you know, the classic the stay and all that. This is really where you, you get the tension. And I think that, you know, Chris ended up investing, like looking at this in the context of Hector, Hector DAO, and I think Chris, maybe you can, you can speak a little bit to that.

Chris Odinet [00:25:50]:
Yeah, I mean, now I guess as good a time as any to talk about that. So we’re writing the paper. It’s totally theoretical at the time we’re doing the chapter version. So it’s very theoretical. Like, oh, what if a DAO filed for bankruptcy? And then like as we’re writing it, one files and it’s Hector DAO and we’re like, oh gosh, this is like a real one. So you are probably very steeped in all this. But Hector DAO, for those who are not, it was formed in 2021 and basically its whole gig is it’s managing crypto assets, engaging kind of defi speculating business like this. It did have, which ended up being very important.

Chris Odinet [00:26:28]:
It had a, not had an affiliated non DAO entity that it would kind of like use on the side for, for various things. And it was rocking and rolling and sort of doing its thing. And then it started to face a bunch of financial distress, largely driven by external events, kind of like Crypto Winter, Terra’s stablecoin fall had a cyber attack and some security threats. So as its treasury was sort of dropping in value, it started to do this kind of like fire sale, was selling things off. But it turns out there was like a little vulnerability in its software management system. So of like a hack, some of its treasury disappeared. So individual Hector DAO token holders thought, okay, I think this is more than just external events.

Chris Odinet [00:27:20]:
I think there’s either like gross negligence or there’s actually foul play by the actually centralized kind of management board of Hector DAO. And so they filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging a bunch of different things, breach of fiduciary duties. They raised some tort theories like conversion, like you stole something of mine, negligence, business like this. And then the management group of Hector Dow, as Kara mentioned, filed a receivership and then filed a Chapter 15 proceeding in the United States. And to kind of connect this to Andrea’s point, what’s interesting is that kind of like despite a lot of the intellectual foundations of DAOs, the decentralization, the direct democracy, like some of the things that ostensibly animate DAOs, this one DAO bankruptcy, the move to bankruptcy was actually driven by all of like exactly the classical things that cause any organization to file for bankruptcy. They want the automatic stay sometimes to deal with litigation, they want to kind of like get control of assets, maybe claw back assets. And that’s exactly what Hector DAO did. Now, Hector DAO was not kind of like the quintessential DAO because it didn’t, it did have not only this kind of like affiliated formal corporate wrapper entity, but it also had like a management system wasn’t just like direct out everyone’s voting with their tokens on every single thing.

Chris Odinet [00:28:56]:
But in the paper. An observation that we have is like that’s not a coincidence that this type of organization was sort of at the door of bankruptcy knocking, asking for help. It’s in fact like very much organic in that as a DAO engages in more complicated type of and sophisticated type transactions that leads them to need to be more centralized in the way that they operate and to respond and to transact that actually is exactly the type of maneuver that gives them access to bankruptcy and for bankruptcy to be successful.

Moish Peltz [00:29:39]:
Hearing all three of you, there’s this huge emphasis on the origins of the cipher funk and crypto anarchist philosophies of DAOs and also the realities of running a business and making money and maybe not being super successful at that. But then also this challenge of well here’s the reality, here’s a lawsuit you’re facing or a potential option of bankruptcy as an outlet to have a stay or to. So how do you, I mean, is it just unrealistic that when you have an organization that’s perhaps mismanaged itself into a financial crisis that it would not just say well let’s. Even though we have a crypto, crypto anarchist kind of underpinnings and that’s our, our aspirations that okay, now we have 10 creditors or we have plaintiffs lawsuits like hey, let’s choose bankruptcy. So I guess my question is, is there a way that these organizations aren’t just going to have to inevitably compromise their values to choose the, the optimal legal outcome? Or it perhaps maybe just taking the question even earlier is maybe they could prepare for this better and select an entity form that would help them off ramp in that direction Consistent perhaps or more consistent with their intellectual underpinnings, but, but making a different compromise earlier on in the process? I don’t know. How do you even analyze that question?

Kara Bruce [00:31:09]:
I think we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it. Chris, do you want to take the first cut at this? Do you want me to.

Chris Odinet [00:31:17]:
Well, I’ll just say one thing. I want to pass the ball to you. I think certainly the more sophisticated and complex type business models that the organization wants to engage in, kind of like any collective endeavor, there are going to be more formalistic mechanisms put in place because you need those to sort of transact and interact with the rest of the world. I think that’s less so. Maybe as long as the ecosystem that you’re operating in is like all on chain, you still like, need some formalization, but you can operate a little bit more. I don’t want to say simplistically, but maybe without as many of the formal structures. But as soon as you start reaching out and operating in like, sort of the, I call it the real economy, the brick and mortar world, the more I think two things happen, like you find yourself needing to, in order to do what you want to do, formalize yourself. But then you also are sort of faced with the fact that now there are all of these exogenous forces, involuntary creditors, like tort creditors, who will drag you into a more formal venue that.

Chris Odinet [00:32:31]:
To vindicate their rights. Kara, I don’t know if that could set you up or.

Kara Bruce [00:32:35]:
No, no, I totally agree. You know, I think that ideals look a lot different at the outset of a project than they do when the project is failing or we’re facing a litigation threat, a market crash, a data breach, whatever it is, post hoc. We’re looking at this world a lot differently. And yeah, I think the job of attorneys is to help clients forecast that and make smart plans ahead of time that help them manage that. And certainly if you’re looking at an insolvency scenario, doing some corporate form planning certainly helps protect the individual token holders and makes a path into bankruptcy smoother. So it’s interesting to think about. So the, the, and I think Chris and Andrea are exactly correct that there are DAOs that are maturing and you’re probably representing them, they’re hiring lawyers, they’re making these choices that allow them to operate more like a traditional business. I got really, really interested in the zealots and the holdouts, the, the ones who, as a matter of principle, are just not going to go for that.

Kara Bruce [00:33:57]:
And so I think when we get into a situation where insolvency is knocking or even just litigation, there may be desire for bankruptcy, but we may not be able to see our dispersed voting mechanisms. We might not be able to get the DAO into bankruptcy because there may be too many, too many varied opinions. So I think there can be a group of cred of, of DAOs that have the will but not the means. But for those DAOs who don’t, who, who don’t have the will, who want to stay outside of this world completely, no legal formalities. You know, we’ll just take care of it on our, of their own. I think the message that your listeners should take away is that legal systems find you and Andrea has mentioned this before. So bankruptcy is something overwhelmingly sought by a company in modern times, but it can be imposed upon an entity involuntarily. So if you have a group of disgruntled creditors, which can include token holders, potentially, there’s a lot of variation.

Kara Bruce [00:35:11]:
It sort of depends on what’s going on. But if you have a group of creditors and sometimes general partners can, can qualify, they can push the company or the DAO into bankruptcy. And so knowing that, I think is another really important push to get DAOs who are, who are starting to develop their operations to just think ahead a little bit.

Kyle Lawrence [00:35:35]:
I’m trying to think back to my bankruptcy course in law school. Is that the 341 Conference? Is that what that is?

Kara Bruce [00:35:42]:
So that is an initial thing, but you’re close. Involuntary section 303 of the code.

Kyle Lawrence [00:35:48]:
Okay.

Kara Bruce [00:35:48]:
But yeah, the, the, the conference at the beginning, that’s when we get together. And by the way, imagine a DAO in that we, we put a debtor representative under oath and people can ask them whatever they want. So number one, who’s going to be that person? Number two, how are they going to feel about all of the discussions disclosure that bankruptcy requires? Number three, how are we going to get all of the schedules and the statements and the paperwork that bankruptcy files together when we have the DAO? So that’s why you can imagine the DAOs that are more sophisticated and are operating with some legal representation can make this transition in a fairly streamlined fashion. But yeah, those DAOs who, who may have the will, it could be a complete disaster trying to get a handle on things.

Kyle Lawrence [00:36:41]:
Oh sure, Kara, that’s a great point. And it harkens back to something that Andrea was talking about earlier about how a lot of these DAOs will be deemed to be general partnerships, which we’ve talked about it on the show. It’s the last thing you want. But the idea, you know, Moish and I always approach people who contact us and they say are my best friends. We don’t need agreements, we don’t need this, we don’t need that. We’ve always approached it from the standpoint of sure, you can embed things in the Smart contract and everything’s fine. Now what happens when you’re $100 million company, you have nothing in place dictating how those funds get distributed. You want to leave it up to the community.

Kyle Lawrence [00:37:20]:
That’s going to be a disaster nine times out of 10. But I never really thought about it in terms of having the ability to avail yourselves about bankruptcy protection. That’s actually a really interesting lens to view these situations that I candidly had never considered. So thank you.

Chris Odinet [00:37:34]:
Yeah.

Kara Bruce [00:37:35]:
Or just think about a creditor. And it’s hard because a lot of DAOs are doing more investment style things. But if you imagine a DAO having a creditor or a group of creditors, the example I like to use when we present is, you know, some DAOs are trying to run fast food food businesses. I know that that’s kind of a pie in the sky example but you know, like imagine they give everybody in town food poisoning. Then you’re going to have a lot of creditors. And so thinking about those structures as a way to, you know, eliminate individual liability from the get go is something to think about.

Andrea Tosato [00:38:13]:
So the only thing that I might add here is that by the time sort of we’ve done that initial part of the paper trying to understand, so the, the intellectual foundations and trying to understand like read the landscape of DAOs from a legal perspective and then we went through the analysis of the Hector DAO bankruptcy and kind of we arrived at the end of that saying well, Hector DAO worked in bankruptcy because they weren’t really as decentralized. They weren’t like the ride or die kind of DAO. They, they actually had the, the beside corporate structure. They kind of had the delegation of powers and then someone who was actually capable of and in a position to make decisions for everyone. But we also kind of recognize that when it comes to those DAOs that don’t do any of that. So the ones that are really like, they’re not something that stems out of a few friends getting together, but it’s like the really decentralized something that starts from a forum and then someone throws a smart contract on Ethereum and people randomly join by sending eth to a smart contract and getting a token back that gives them voting rights. The stuff that people really discussed, our conclusion was well, this is just fundamentally incompatible. This is just not going to work with bankruptcy.

Andrea Tosato [00:39:35]:
And this is where Kara really had the idea from for part three and all credit goes to her. She basically said, okay, well we’ve kind of recognized that for these DAOs, the ones that really are the Zealots, the one that buy into the ideals, those are not gonna be suitable, then this knock bankruptcy is not going to work for them. Traditional bankruptcy. But what if they say, well, then let’s do bankruptcy on chain? Forget all the standard bankruptcy stuff. What if we do a DAO? And the purpose of this DAO is effectively to provide bankruptcy services for other DAOs. And again, I’m going to pass the ball to Kara because she, she came up with the idea. But the best part was, and how are we going to call this DAO? The DAO that provides bankruptcy services to other DAOs? We’re going to call it Broke DAO.

Moish Peltz [00:40:35]:
Awesome name.

Kyle Lawrence [00:40:36]:
I like that.

Andrea Tosato [00:40:37]:
And that became the. It’s kind of an experiment, a thought experiment that kind of develops in two directions.

Moish Peltz [00:40:45]:
Right.

Andrea Tosato [00:40:45]:
In a sense, it’s us, it’s the three of us trying to think, okay, how could you do bankruptcy on chain? But at the same time, it also gives us the chance to reflect on how traditional, what traditional bankruptcy is all about. Because by trying to emulate, trying to recreate it on chain, you get a different perspective in understanding how traditional bankruptcy is. So having sort of been the hype man for Kara and Broke DAO, I think Kara, you can tell us all about it.

Kyle Lawrence [00:41:17]:
That was a good setup.

Kara Bruce [00:41:19]:
Wow, thank you. Yes, you can follow me around and just introduce me. Anyway, yeah, we did have fun with Broke DAO and we were all, by the way, moving over the summer we wrote that. So I was just listening to podcasts about DAOs and thinking about the industry and recognizing that, you know, there are so many creative, revolutionary disruptors out there. And so what would it look like? We know that DAOs are looking into dispute resolution on chain. And bankruptcy essentially is a multi party dispute resolution system. So if you have six friends who are your creditors, you don’t need a bankruptcy system if you can all agree. But getting everybody to that agreement is very difficult.

Kara Bruce [00:42:11]:
So I did the sketching. Andrea and Chris for sure, sure, especially Andrea, kind of put the technical game theory ideas on this. But basically we imagine Broke DAO starting just as the liquidation agent that Hector probably needed. So basically a DAO in distress takes all their treasury and assigns it to a third party who sells it and satisfies the token holders or anybody else, depending on the terms of the smart contract. So you’ve just got a neutral party handling that process, very much like I imagine a DAO would, would go out of business naturally on chain, but it’s just somebody else doing it that may provide some of that trust and distance from whatever issues have been boiling up under there. But as we started thinking about it, we imagined that the DAO could do things like, okay, well, dispute resolution. If there are issues about who owns what or you know, who owes what money to whom, we could see some Claros or Aragon court style dispute resolution built in. It could as well.

Kara Bruce [00:43:33]:
And this could be controversial, but the DAO could do fraud detection, could run scripts to figure out what sort of shenanigans were going on. And by the way, that would inform token holders choice to maybe opt into bankruptcy or just sue outside of the DAO if they find out that there’s a, that there, there was some sort of internal misconduct happening. Of course that may make it difficult for people to get into a Broke DAO situation if they know that that’s a potential outcome, but you know, whatever. And then we kind of imagine it growing from there. So it was fun to think about. But I’m glad that in the setup Andrea mentioned that it’s important to remember that on chain alternatives exist as alternatives and the law is out there. And I know both of you can appreciate this and beat this drum quite a lot with your guests. So these options only work so long as everybody’s into them and doesn’t want to go off chain.

Kara Bruce [00:44:46]:
So if we’re all creditors of each other and we get together, there’s not enough money to go around and work, okay, we hammer out a solution, great, we don’t need bankruptcy. But if Chris is gonna be the one who’s trying to hold out or race to the courthouse or sue, take all the money and run, that’s when we need that coercive power of the courts. And, and on chain solutions can’t do that. So involuntary bankruptcy or lawsuits are things that anybody who’s, you know, developing into this world needs to think about because they don’t go away just because you’re trying to plan an alternative.

Moish Peltz [00:45:27]:
So would that be compatible with perhaps like binding arbitration that forces a dispute mechanism and the dispute mechanism is something like that, I guess, except for the involuntary, you know, if there’s some creditor that was not a party to that agreement.

Kara Bruce [00:45:44]:
Right, yeah.

Chris Odinet [00:45:45]:
And our thinking is the more a DAO tries to move its operations to the outs off chain world, start doing more things in the brick and mortar world, the higher the chances are that you end up with an involuntary creditor. A torque creditor would be like a great example that’s not bound by whatever sort of the internal dispute resolution mechanism that that’s built into the collection of Smart contracts. That is the DAO. Like some sort of mandatory binding arbitration.

Kara Bruce [00:46:20]:
Yeah, totally agree. You know, we have an issue with arbitration if, if there are third parties who aren’t bound, being forced into it. Arbitration also has the, the power of, you know, a major federal law supporting it. So, you know, it’s. I think that there would be way it would be easier and bankruptcy arbitration is a whole thing that I would love to talk about, but I imagine your guests would, would prefer. I don’t. But. So, you know, can you arbitrate your way or volunteer, you know, can contract your way out of bankruptcy? No.

Kara Bruce [00:46:59]:
So that involuntary bankruptcy would still be lurking in the background. Sorry for cutting.

Andrea Tosato [00:47:06]:
No, but just there’s also, I think, another lesson or another message that we put forth in the paper. I think it’s funny that I’m going to be the one saying it because out of the three of us, I’m the one who’s a little bit more fascinated by distributed technology, blockchain. And out of the three of us, I’m the one that comes up with the geeky stuff. But so you’d imagine that I would have greater sympathy for this idea that, you know, if people are really clever about, about it and they do some clever game theory, some Karen sticks, you can kind of remake bankruptcy on chain. You’d expect me to say this, but I think that one of the, and this was really clear to, to Kara, who’s really the bankruptcy specialist, but.

Kara Bruce [00:47:59]:
And I started being like, it’ll never work. Sorry, go ahead, Andrea. I continue to learn that one of.

Andrea Tosato [00:48:06]:
The lessons, one of, one of the messages that we, we came away with and then really is expressed in the paper is this, that even if you are successful in kind of building an on chain bankruptcy mechanism, there are some things that are possible in bank, some of the magic of bankruptcy and the reorganizations that come out of bankruptcy and the success that comes out of reorganization is only possible because you have an outside actor, an external actor with power. So the courts, the state broadly writ, that can come in, freeze everything, freeze everyone and say, okay, everybody’s gonna, everybody’s gonna sit down now, all right? And we’re gonna count everything and then we’re gonna try to find another agreement and try to find a way to make everyone whole or come as close as possible by this through a reorganization. And we’re going to figure out a payment plan. Something like, something like this is possible only if you have that kind of setup, right? This, the sovereign, the state. And, and this is the, the bit that is really in incompatible. And so if you are really one that believes in the cyberpunks for crypto anarchist, what you’re effectively saying is I detest the stakes so much, I’m so much against that kind of thing that I’m willing to give up the advantages that would come in in bankruptcy. Because if you want the bargain of bankruptcy, if you want that possibility, but we’re freezing everything, we’re sitting in one out while we figure things out, we do the grand bargain, we develop a plan if you want that you need this external entity that has the power to stop all the creditors both from assaulting the debtor and from kind of doing intra creditor violence. And so you know that that’s, that’s really it like we the the Broke DAO is it’s a lot of fun because it’s us trying to figure out how much you can push the envelope on chain and trying to figure out fun ways, game theory ways of resolving disputes and doing, you know, an elegant liquidation, neutral liquidation.

Andrea Tosato [00:50:35]:
But also not only there is this recognition on our part that if someone doesn’t want to play ball, they’re going to drag you in court. There’s also this recognition that some of the great benefits that come from bankruptcy are only possible because all of those involved accept the power of the state, follow the rules and submit to this coercive power. And if you’re really cyberpunk kind of person, this is not going to be your jam.

Moish Peltz [00:51:08]:
Well, I wonder if this isn’t kind of pulling on the thread of the limits of decentralized technology and blockchain in the sense that I imagine the median crypto user is quite disillusioned with the bankruptcy process to the extent they know about it because they probably know about being a creditor of FTX or Celsius or one of those. And those are as a user not something they expected or wanted to participate in. And they’re seeing the immense cost and time and, and unfairness perhaps from their perspective that is that is thrust upon them when they were perhaps signing up for something else. So for, for someone that is still passionate about crypto and its optimistic use cases and the ways it could interact in a positive way or change the way that we interact with the real world. Is bankruptcy kind of just the big bad power that be that they should be afraid of or is there really. You were mentioning some of the upsides and the benefits. How should the crypto community think about bankruptcy? Should they perhaps think about in some of the larger legislation that’s being contemplated. I know we mentioned stablecoins earlier, and there’s, I believe, in one of the bills, a discussion of treating regular consumers as super creditors versus something else.

Moish Peltz [00:52:39]:
So is there a legislative change here? But how should crypto users think about bankruptcy given all that we’ve learned over the past, you know, call it five years, with the unexpected interaction of blockchain and US Courts?

Chris Odinet [00:52:55]:
I guess just broadly, I would say crypto users, proponents, to the extent they care, they should care about bankruptcy. It’s really just a small part, a significant part, but a small part about just caring generally about what you’re doing in this space. Like, what do you own? Do you think? Can you own any of this stuff? You talk about it and you act like you own it. You’re investing in something, you’re giving it to someone to hold for you, or you’re giving it to someone to make money for you. So proponents, those who deal in crypto, they’re dealing in it in a way that, that at least implicitly, is full of expectations, full of expectations that they actually want the law to recognize. If someone steals my crypto, I want to be able to get it back, just like if someone steals my car, I want to be able to get that back. Bankruptcy, it’s just an outgrowth of the fact that those implicit expectations about what the law is doing for you has other consequences. And, and sometimes, you know, there are consequences that you want, right? You want, as someone who is, you know, aggrieved, a, a user of crypto, you want the ability to, let’s just say, like, stop to freeze everything so that you get a fair shake against the insolvent Voyager or Celsius or what have you.

Chris Odinet [00:54:33]:
You, like, it’s in your interest that you, as a creditor, get that equality of treatment that, that bankruptcy is really all about, like protecting the, the rights of unsecured creditors. So, you know, I think you can’t think about caring about bankruptcy unless you recognize that you have to care about. And implicitly you do care about, because you’re spending money and buying and transacting all of this. What we think of as the private law, the property law, the contract law, like all the things that you’re doing with this thing that you believe so much in, with this technology that you think has such great potential.

Kara Bruce [00:55:13]:
I totally agree. So bankruptcy is not the bogeyman here. It is when there’s not enough money to go around, when we are in a scenario where the pie has somehow shrunk and somebody there’s going to be winners and losers. That is the problem. And it, and, and Chris is exactly right. As things are going well, we have expectations and senses of things. But as, as you know, because you work with these clients all the time, we may not have, there might not be a lot of appetite for really lawyering up very well. And bankruptcy is just a forum.

Kara Bruce [00:55:56]:
It’s not the only forum. I mean, this is what was going on in the cases Andrea discussed. When we get into a legal forum, often we have to kind of nail down how the law approaches these things. And that is not always as great for an individual if they haven’t planned in advance.

Andrea Tosato [00:56:20]:
Yeah, I think that you’re right. So that the narrative right now is that bankruptcy is the boogeyman. Or many, many clients, customers, individuals who have held tokens or whatnot, have been roped into the bankruptcies of big platforms and will have a very negative position perceptions of it. But I think that if we’re being, and I understand that, I do, but if we’re being honest, bankruptcy is not the problem. Bankruptcy is the moment when someone loudly screams that the emperor has no clothes. That’s the problem. So what happened with the people who got roped in the Voyagers Celsius, FDX bankruptcies and so on? What happened was these people were told, oh, you can park your tokens with us, they’re safe. It remains your stuff, it’s yours.

Andrea Tosato [00:57:18]:
And then this is the private law point. There was insufficient attention to the respective rights and obligations. Was it really the case that the platform was just taking custody? And then it turns out that if the platform on one hand tells you, oh, we’re just safekeeping this for you, and we’re also giving you a 370% yield per month. Something has to give. So this, this was really, you know, the Voyager kind of time. And what it turns out, it turns out that these platforms were lending the tokens out. And the moment that you, in, in any world, not just in the crypto world, in the moment in which you give some stuff of yours to someone for them to lend out if things go wrong, you the one who provided the assets to be loaned out in a bankruptcy, you fair horribly. This is true in brick and mortar.

Andrea Tosato [00:58:12]:
This is true with Voyager. The problem is that the people that lost out in Voyager were told something different. They were brought, they were told, don’t worry, everything’s safe. It’s safe because blockchain. It’s safe because tamper resistant. And that’s where. Right. And so it’s not about bankruptcy.

Andrea Tosato [00:58:37]:
It’s about in this world, paying more attention to the respective rights and obligation. That’s what Chris says. What you can own is when you give your stuff to someone else, what rights do you continue to have? Bankruptcy is just a moment when.

Kara Bruce [00:58:55]:
There’s.

Andrea Tosato [00:58:55]:
Nowhere to go, not enough to go. There’s not enough to go around. And some decisions have to be made.

Moish Peltz [00:59:00]:
But I mean that’s an, that’s an area where, where banks, you know, are, are in that same role. And they, you know, rehypothecate they re lend assets. But there are certain legislative rules around how ordinary customers are treated with banks. Right. So we don’t have that in crypto. So my, my point is maybe there’s a different outlet here where consumers that have certain expectations perhaps should have those aligned between commercial law and bankruptcy law in a way that more closely matches their expectations.

Kyle Lawrence [00:59:31]:
I think a huge part of it is, I mean, Kara, you put it great with saying that bankruptcy is not the boogeyman here. I mean, I can’t tell you how many conversations we had with Celsius customers who received summons, they were sued by Celsius because they didn’t respond to what they rightfully thought was a spam email saying, hey, you got to put the money back in. They’re saying, well, I didn’t do anything wrong. Why do I have to deal with this? It’s a question I don’t have an answer for. I think part of our mission, I think yours too is demystifying a lot of these things. Not just in blockchain and crypto, but general corporate law, bankruptcy law. I mean, you know, mor lawyers. I don’t know a ton about bankruptcy law.

Kyle Lawrence [01:00:13]:
You guys are doing me a favor by, by demystifying some of it.

Chris Odinet [01:00:16]:
So your, your point is a, is a really good one and that is like people’s expectations. I mean, I know this is an empirical question. Maybe you could tell me based on your interactions with your clients sort of everyday, like kind of retail crypto investors. My perception is the way that they interact with, with these intermediaries, exchange companies and like the Voyagers D5 platforms. It’s, it’s a little bit in the way that, and maybe not explicitly, but implicitly, it’s sort of with this expectation like, oh, this is either like when I deposit some money into a bank and even if I really am parting with that money, I kind of don’t really have to worry about it because there’s FDIC insurance to 250,000. You know, like there’s this backstop. You know, if you even think about the fact that the bank actually has the money and they’re lending it out or you’re thinking about it when you use like your Charles Schwab securities account and you buy you know, a securities entitlement to, you know, some Apple stock or something, and that broker dealer account like has a license and they have to ring fence all of the, the securities that they hold for all their customers separate from their own assets so that their creditors can’t get to any of that stuff. So there’s like this expectation that’s translating this crypto activity to what has been like pretty mainstream, somewhat similar activity, but has this big overlay of consumer protection that we kind of as retail consumers, we don’t even have to think about anymore because it’s so pervasive that you just kind of assume it.

Chris Odinet [01:01:57]:
And so it’s like this expectation and in one area it just kind of subconsciously is bleeding into the activity in the crypto space so that the Celsius customer that calls you up is really shocked to find out that it’s not like their bank account.

Kyle Lawrence [01:02:12]:
People might be thinking about it a little bit today as the world is on fire. But a great point.

Kara Bruce [01:02:17]:
Well, I do have to just say.

Moish Peltz [01:02:19]:
Which is the user experience of, of the products does not at any level indicate like the legal outcomes in all these different scenarios. Unless you’re having these conversations now post, you know them and like putting the money where they maybe they shouldn’t have.

Andrea Tosato [01:02:38]:
Guys, I’m, I’m afraid I have to jump.

Chris Odinet [01:02:40]:
I’m.

Andrea Tosato [01:02:41]:
I’m really sorry.

Moish Peltz [01:02:42]:
Yeah, thank you.

Andrea Tosato [01:02:43]:
Thank you so much.

Moish Peltz [01:02:44]:
This was great.

Kyle Lawrence [01:02:45]:
Thank you.

Andrea Tosato [01:02:46]:
Thank you.

Kara Bruce [01:02:48]:
Can I end on a positive note really quickly?

Kyle Lawrence [01:02:50]:
Please Kara.

Kara Bruce [01:02:51]:
Because you mentioned your customers, who are your clients who had to pay money into the estate and how hard that is to wrap your head around. And that is one of bankruptcy superpowers called a preference avoidance action. So just think of it from the perspective of a Hector style token holder who thinks that money has been, you know, stolen or embezzled from someone inside their entity. If they are in a bankruptcy system, they’re not the windshield that time or they’re not the bug, they’re the windshield. They’re the ones who get to use that power to recover that transfer. So I just. Bankruptcy has superpowers and it’s not perfect, it takes a long time, it’s very expensive.

Kyle Lawrence [01:03:35]:
But wanted to slide that in there. That’s why we call it the practice of law, not the perfection of law. But you both have been extremely generous with your time. We, you know, Moish and I really thank you for stopping by. Before we end this episode, any final thoughts, parting words of wisdom? Where can we find you? What’s on the docket next? Kara, we’ll start with you.

Kara Bruce [01:03:56]:
Oh, I, I already threw in my parting shots, but I am on Blue Sky. I don’t know what my thing is. Professor K. Bruce, I think. And yeah, just looking forward to staying in tune with this, this industry. Go ahead, Chris.

Chris Odinet [01:04:11]:
Yeah, thank you so much for having us. I mean, it’s totally fantastic to chat with you and I hope your, your listeners enjoy this just as like a small plug. Andrea and I are writing a book right now that will be due to the publisher in the summer, but it’s all about, like, this commercial law, private law, property rights across all different types of crypto domains. Everything from like NFT, tokens, the use of crypto and real estate transactions. So it, it explores these ideas across all these different domains to kind of like talk about what we’ve been talking about here. And that’s like a better understanding of what you are doing and what you really get and what you don’t get when you interact with this decentralized world.

Kyle Lawrence [01:04:59]:
Wonderful. What’s that going to be called?

Chris Odinet [01:05:02]:
It is called Digital Commercial Law. Private Law in a World of Platforms, Tokens and Automation. Out with Oxford Press sometime next year.

Kyle Lawrence [01:05:14]:
That’s great. Well, you have two avid readers right here, so we’ll definitely keep an eye out for that. Thank you.

Kara Bruce [01:05:19]:
Thanks for your interest. You guys have a great day.

Kyle Lawrence [01:05:25]:
Well, that wraps it up for this edition of Block and Order. Very special thanks to Kara, Chris and Andrea for stopping by and sharing their thoughts. Just remember that nothing on Block and Order is meant to be construed as legal and or financial advice. Please consult your own attorneys or representatives or go and take the plunge. The specific discussion of any assets on Block and Order is not meant to be an endorsement of said assets. Please again, do your own research. Very special thank you to producer Abby. Without her, the show would not be possible.

Kyle Lawrence [01:05:52]:
So on behalf of Moish Peltz, I’m Kyle Lawrence. Thanks everybody.

Moish Peltz [01:05:56]:
See you next time.

Please note that this show is meant for informational and entertainment purposes only. This is not legal advice. Please hire your own attorney. The hosts or guests appearing on Block and Order may hold cryptocurrency, NFTs, or other digital assets from companies mentioned during our programming. This possession of digital assets does not constitute a professional endorsement, legal advice, or financial advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with their own legal and financial advisors for personalized guidance in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space.