Adopting the analysis of the United Kingdom Jurisdictional Task Force ('UKJT") on the proprietary status of crypto currencies, a recent decision of the English High Court, AA v Persons Unknown,^[1] has found that crypto assets such as Bitcoin are "property" and therefore capable of being the subject of a proprietary injunction or freezing order.

The Privy Council's recent judgment in Weavering^[1]upheld the decisions of the Cayman Islands Grand Court and Court of Appeal that payments made to redeemed investors immediately prior to the fund's liquidation were preference payments under section 145(1) of the Companies Law (2018 Revision) (Law), and must be repaid.

The UK Supreme Court has handed down its judgment in Stanford International Bank Ltd (In Liquidation) (Appellant)v HSBC Bank PLC (Respondent) [2022] UKSC 34, striking out a significant claim (£116m) for breach of the Quincecare duty on the grounds that the claimant had suffered no loss.

A crash in the cryptocurrency industry started this past spring, causing a significant number of cryptocurrency exchanges and related entities to seek bankruptcy protection, including the recent filing of one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, FTX. The volatility in the industry continues, with the subsequent filing of the cryptocurrency firm BlockFi and the crypto-mining company Core Scientific.

Crypto Basics

On September 8, 2022, a three-judge panel in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (the “Second Circuit”) reversed the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (the “District Court”) when it determined that lenders of a syndicated loan facility to Revlon, Inc.

Finance companies in Slovakia have felt endangered since 2019 when the Regional Court in Košice, acting as a second instance court confirmed a lower-court ruling that a financial party could be qualified as a related party in the eventual insolvency of the borrower as debtor.

The massive FTX bankruptcy has rattled the crypto industry. While it may take some time for investors, investigators, and customers to learn what happened in the lead up to FTX’s demise, it seems already clear that many FTX customers will lose cryptocurrency and other digital assets (“Tokens”) they had deposited in FTX trading accounts. News reports suggest that those losses are the result of FTX’s related trading arm, Alameda Research, having borrowed FTX customer deposits using FTX’s proprietary token as collateral at an inflated valuation.

We recently had a chance to speak to The Independent and

Summary of Key Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) Amendments

One of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges—FTX Trading Ltd.—and many of its affiliates filed for bankruptcy earlier this month.¹ While the full impact of the FTX bankruptcy is not yet clear, various responses from the executive branch and federal and state regulators indicate that, in the short term, agencies will continue to use their existing authorities to seek information about the practices of crypto market participants and to enforce existing rules to protect customers and avoid further market contagion.² The following statements may indicate what market