Understanding the Rapid Growth and Compliance Challenges of Cryptocurrency and Digital Asset Businesses: Token Issuers, Exchanges, and DeFi Platforms

Kyle Lawrence | Falcon Rappaport & Berkman LLP

Kyle is a Partner with FRB’s Corporate & Securities Practice Group, and with the Digital Assets Practice Group. Kyle’s practice is focused on corporate and private securities matters, serving clients as lead counsel on all types of corporate transactions including private placements, mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, corporate finance, planning and strategies, licensing, manufacturing, supply, and distribution arrangements. He provides dedicated hands-on personal support to clients from negotiation to closing and beyond.

Kyle regularly represents clients in a wide range of industries including telecommunications, food and nutraceutical manufacturing and distribution, restaurants, emerging technologies, retail, light manufacturing, commercial and private lending, architecture and software development. He also regularly advises private issuers and principals with respect to operations and compliance matters in his active private equity practice.

In mergers and acquisitions transactions, Kyle has regularly represented both buyers and sellers of businesses. Over the past 15 years, he has successfully closed numerous deals with business owners selling their businesses to strategic buyers, private equity funds, and private equity-backed strategic buyers both domestically and internationally. With respect to securities offering and financing transactions, Kyle has significant experience representing both issuers and founders on the one hand, and investors on the other hand, giving him years of experience related to private securities offerings, venture capital, and similar startup financings, and FINRA and SEC regulatory issues.

As part of the firm’s Digital Assets Practice Group, Kyle’s practice has expanded to include advising companies on blockchain, cryptocurrency, Web3, and NFT matters, with a focus on how the corporate and securities matters affect these types of projects.

Alma Angotti | FTI Consulting

Alma Angotti is a recognized expert in financial crime compliance and economic sanctions with more than 30 years of experience in both regulatory enforcement and global consulting. Alma has held senior enforcement roles at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”). She brings deep subject-matter expertise in regulatory compliance, including Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-money Laundering (“BSA/AML”), sanctions and counter-terrorist financing (“CFT”).

At FTI Consulting, Alma advises clients on compliance risk assessments, remediation strategies, enforcement preparedness and regulatory investigations. Her clients include global and mid-sized financial institutions; global fintech firms; digital assets and payments institutions; stablecoins and cryptocurrency platforms; broker-dealers; hedge funds; casinos; and multinational corporations.

Alma serves on the advisory boards of the Global Digital Asset and Cryptocurrency Association and the Digital Dollar Project. At FinCEN and FINRA, she designed and led the AML enforcement programs and regularly trains regulators and government officials worldwide on AML and financial crime compliance matters. Additionally, she has been approved to be an independent compliance monitor by federal and state regulatory agencies, including the SEC, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”) and the New York State Department of Financial Services (“NYDFS”).

Alma holds a J.D. from the University of Virginia and a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from West Virginia University.

Session I – Navigating the Evolving Regulatory Landscape for Cryptocurrencies | 1:00pm – 2:00pm

• Securities law & howey test (with a history of how the SEC approached crypto up until now)
• The new crypto task force
• GENIUS Act
• Market structure bill
• Compliance and risk management
• Future regulatory outlook

Break | 2:00pm – 2:10pm

Session II – Digital Asset Regulation: Compliance in a Time of Regulatory Uncertainty | 2:10pm – 3:10pm

• Risk-based compliance: In an uncertain regulatory environment – focus on a program to identify and mitigate risk
• Compliance playbooks: Governance, risk assessments, documentation, testing: Repeat regularly
• KYC/AML strategies: Navigating compliance across centralized and decentralized platforms
• Audit trails and internal controls: Building evidence for legal defensibility
• Legal-compliance collaboration: How compliance teams operationalize legal advice
• Best practices for risk mitigation: Creating scalable, adaptable compliance programs in fast evolving markets