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12 September 20181 October 2018anti-money laundering, blockchain

Will crypto and blockchain face a new wave of AML regulations?

Anti-money laundering (AML) is the first area of Polish law where the parliament has adopted regulations directly related to cryptocurrencies and some other types of crypto-assets. We have devoted a lot of articles to this issue on the blog.

The direction of changes in the Polish law concerning AML results from the development of a global approach to this issue. Mostly this is due to the work of the Financial Action Task Force. FATF is an intergovernmental organisation authorised to create and assist in the implementation and monitoring of anti-money laundering standards, financing of terrorism and financing of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The EU and Polish legislative work on revision of the AML regulations is based on the models presented in FATF publications from 2014 and 2015.

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7 September 20181 October 2018blockchain

Smart contracts – hope for the law?

Smart contracts eloquently capture the dilemma facing traditional legal systems, whose inefficiency has reached dimensions threatening systemic incoherence and failure to achieve the purposes the law is intended to serve. The system needs urgent reform. But the alternative of replacing the law as we know it with automation and algorithms threatens the loss of the internal profundity of the law and its openness to nuances. This dilemma will be more and more apparent in the years to come. In this context, it is essential to achieve a clear understanding of the hopes and threats integral to smart contracts.

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6 September 20181 October 2018blockchain

First draft legislation regulating initial coin offerings

It should come as no surprise to attentive readers of this blog that the European Union may take up the regulation of ICOs as a method of obtaining funds through the public distribution of digital tokens (or coins).

So far, we have only been confronted with market speculation on this issue, and the Commission itself has not signalled a willingness to take any legislative steps in the imminent future (see e.g. FinTech action plan published in March 2018).

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23 August 20185 September 2018blockchain, changes in law

Taxation of income from trading in cryptocurrencies: A new approach

The Polish government is currently working on a completely new tax regime applicable to income from trading in cryptocurrencies (virtual currencies) for personal income tax and corporate income tax purposes. For PIT purposes, this income is to be taxed as income from cash capital at the rate of 19% regardless of whether the turnover is of a private nature or made in the course of business activity. For CIT purposes, the income from trading in cryptocurrencies will be classified as capital gains. These new rules would apply from 1 January 2019.

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23 August 20185 September 2018blockchain

Is it time for a smart contracts codification commission?

The latest annual report from The Law Commission (an independent body responsible for reviewing existing laws and proposing legal reforms in England and Wales) included the announcement of a new effort to review the way in which the current English legal framework applies to smart contracts.

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20 August 20185 September 2018blockchain, privacy/personal data protection

Who is the data controller in a blockchain?

In the latest Rzeczpospolita Report on the legal aspects of blockchain and its applications, I briefly discussed the challenges related to applying data protection regulations in this context. It is a complicated issue as it appears that blockchain can potentially challenge the basic assumptions and regulatory approaches provided by the GDPR.

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