Block & Order Weekly Docket (March 16, 2026)
20 Million Down. 1 Million to Go. | Gemini Nano Banana 2
This week:
- 🏛️ SEC and CFTC ink historic joint crypto oversight deal
- 🤖 AI agents in court, on trial, and killing the billable hour
- ⚖️ Tornado Cash dev Roman Storm headed for retrial — while Treasury walks back mixer hostility
- 📰 Binance sues the Wall Street Journal
It’s Tax Season. Do You Know Where Your Crypto Is?
The IRS’s new broker reporting rules are live, the compliance landscape is half-built, and if you think tracking crypto across wallets, exchanges, and DeFi protocols is straightforward, you should talk to Mark DiMichael. In our latest episode of Block & Order, Kyle Lawrence and I sit down with Mark DiMichael, Partner at Citrin Cooperman and founder of the firm’s Digital Assets practice, to break down how forensic investigators actually trace cryptocurrency across the blockchain. We get into the real mechanics: how hidden assets surface in divorce disputes and fraud cases, how investigators translate on-chain activity for judges and juries who’ve never opened a wallet, and how the evolving IRS reporting requirements are changing the game for crypto investigations.
⚖️ AI Law & Liability
Anthropic Sues Over Trump Admin ‘Campaign of Retaliation’ Anthropic filed suit alleging the administration is retaliating against the company. This is a collision of AI policy, politics, and corporate speech that could set precedent for how government interacts with AI firms. Law360 | Complaint
Judge Blocks Perplexity AI Agents from Shopping on Amazon A federal court issued an injunction under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and related California law stopping Perplexity’s AI shopping agents (using its Comet browser) from making purchases on Amazon’s platform on behalf of a user. This is a first-of-its-kind ruling that AI agents can violate the law when they act as autonomous consumers on behalf of users. It looks like Perplexity will appeal to the Ninth Circuit. (Case No. 3:25-cv-09514, N.D. Cal.) The Verge | Order Granting Motion for Preliminary Injunction | Docket on CourtListener
Gracenote Sues OpenAI Over Metadata Copyright Gracenote Media Services (a Nielsen-owned music metadata company) filed suit against OpenAI for copyright infringement, alleging its structured metadata was used to train AI models. This isn’t a creative-works case; it’s a database-rights play, and it’s a potentially harder argument for AI companies to defeat (although Feist could cut the other way?). (Case No. 1:26-cv-01947, S.D.N.Y., filed March 10, 2026) ChatGPT is Eating the World | Docket on CourtListener | Complaint
Photobucket Can’t Escape AI Training Suit The photo hosting platform failed to dismiss claims that it improperly licensed user images for AI model training, keeping alive questions about platform liability in the AI data supply chain. (Doe v. Photobucket, Case No. 1:24-cv-03557, D. Colo.) Law360 | Docket on CourtListener | Order
Prosecutor Resigns After Judge Exposes AI Errors in Slide Deck A prosecutor stepped down after a judge publicly displayed a slide deck highlighting AI-generated hallucinations in court filings. Even prosecutors are now deploying AI without adequate human review. Law360 | Docket on CourtListener
🏛️ Crypto Policy & Regulation
SEC and CFTC End Turf War with Joint Crypto Oversight Memo The two agencies signed a memorandum of understanding dividing crypto regulatory jurisdiction — a move years in the making that could finally give the industry clearer rules of the road. The deal assigns securities-like tokens to the SEC and commodity-like assets to the CFTC, with a joint task force handling gray areas. CoinDesk | CFTC Release 9192-26 | Memorandum of Understanding
Hester Peirce Pushes ‘Narrower’ Exemption for Tokenized Securities The SEC’s Crypto Mom is working on a streamlined exemption framework that would let tokenized securities trade without full registration — paired with calls for simpler disclosure rules tailored to digital assets rather than shoehorning them into 1933-era forms. The Block | SEC Speech Text
CLARITY Act Stalls — Now Unlikely Before April Senate Majority Leader Thune signaled the crypto market structure bill won’t advance through committee before April, pushing back timelines for the regulatory framework the industry has been waiting on. The Defiant
IRS Crypto Reporting Rules Set Up a Confusing Tax Season New IRS broker reporting requirements are now in effect — but implementation gaps and ambiguities mean practitioners and taxpayers are navigating a compliance landscape that isn’t fully built yet. The Block
Treasury Acknowledges Legitimate Uses for Crypto Mixers In a notable reversal of tone, the U.S. Treasury recognized that privacy-preserving tools like crypto mixers serve legitimate purposes — a shift that could influence how courts evaluate mixer-related cases going forward. Bitcoin Magazine | Treasury Report to Congress
Tornado Cash Dev Roman Storm Faces Retrial On the other hand, Storm isn’t out of the woods. Federal prosecutors are pushing for a retrial after his first case ended in a split verdict, keeping the question of developer liability for neutral tools alive and unresolved. (United States v. Storm, Case No. 1:23-cr-00430, S.D.N.Y.) DL News | CourtListener
CFTC Launches Sweeping Review of Prediction Markets While Congress legislates from one direction, the CFTC is moving from the other — issuing a formal Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to solicit public comment on how prediction markets should be regulated. The ANPR signals the agency is serious about building a framework rather than just playing enforcement whack-a-mole. The Defiant | CFTC Release 9194-26 | CFTC Release 9193-26
Binance Sues the Wall Street Journal The crypto exchange filed suit against the WSJ over a February article alleging Binance facilitated Iran-linked crypto flows. Bitcoin Magazine | Complaint
Celsius Accuses Fireblocks of ‘Staggering’ Crypto Negligence The bankrupt lender is going after its former custody provider, alleging Fireblocks’ negligence contributed to massive losses — a case that could reshape custody provider liability standards. (Case No. 22-10965, Bankr. S.D.N.Y.) Law360 | Application for Examination
Aave Founder: DAOs Must Evolve to Stay Competitive Stani Kulechov is right. DAOs need to evolve, and AI agents are part of that evolution. Autonomous on-chain agents that can vote, execute proposals, and manage treasury functions could transform DAO governance from a slow, quorum-chasing process into something genuinely dynamic. The open legal (and practical) question: whether AI agent votes carry the same legitimacy as human member votes under existing governance frameworks, and whether this will actually solve the issues with DAO participation. Unchained
Bitcoin Hits 20 Million Mined A quiet milestone with loud implications: 20 million BTC are now in circulation, leaving fewer than 1 million left to mine. The shrinking supply has real consequences for miner economics, future halvings, and the long-term scarcity thesis that underpins Bitcoin’s value proposition. Bitcoin Magazine
📚Sunday Night Readers
The End of Programming as We Know It The NYT Magazine profiled how Silicon Valley developers have stopped writing code and started managing AI agents that write it for them. For lawyers watching how AI reshapes professional identity, this is the preview. New York Times
Laid-Off Workers Are Training the AI That Replaced Them A sobering investigation into the growing cohort of former scientists, lawyers, and knowledge workers now doing data labeling and RLHF work — helping the models that displaced them get better. New York Magazine
Anthropic’s GC: AI Will Kill the Billable Hour Jeff Bleich, Anthropic’s general counsel, argued that AI will fundamentally dismantle the billable hour model — forcing firms toward value-based pricing and reshaping how legal services are delivered and compensated. Business Insider
Who Uses AI in Congress? The Ones Regulating It. AI is already embedded in congressional offices, just like it’s embedded in law firms, newsrooms, and enterprise workflows everywhere. The real story isn’t that lawmakers use AI — it’s the governance problem it creates: the people drafting legislation to regulate these tools may not fully understand the tools they’re already relying on to draft it. Nicholas Decker
From developers who no longer write code to prosecutors who no longer check their own slides, this week’s throughline is professional identity under pressure. The billable hour, the solo coder, the human DAO voter — none of them are dead yet, but none of them look the same as they did six months ago. The firms and builders who adapt fastest won’t just survive; they’ll set the terms for everyone else.
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Block & Order Weekly Docket | Week of March 9 – 15, 2026
For legal professionals navigating crypto, AI, and emerging technology law. The materials in this article are for informational purposes only and are not legal advice. Do not act upon this information without first seeking advice from an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.