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, he could do four months in the clink standing on his head. Mister Moish Peltz. Hello, Kyle. How you doing? I'm doing all right. I think you could. I think you'd be the shot caller. Pretty quickly, if we're being honest. Is this a New Orleans thing? What are we talking about here? We get into it later. I did just get back from Jazzfest. Thank you for noticing. I'm a little tanner than normal. I don't know if you really come. This is you being Tanner. This is me being Tanner. Listen, I'm a little pasty white. What can I say, Moish? We have a very special episode on the docket for everybody today. We have with us Justin Wales. Justin is the Head of Legal for the Americas at Crypto.com and the author of The Crypto Legal Handbook, which is outstanding. And I encourage everybody to read it. We can put a link down in the show notes of where you can acquire it. Justin's also the author of the newsletter of the same name, thecryptolegalhandbook.com newsletter. We'll put a link to that. Justin, welcome to Block and Order. Yeah, thanks, guys. You might derail me. And I want to just hear about Jazz Fest and if you saw the Jimmy Buffett tribute. I saw a slew of Jimmy Buffett tributes on the first day, actually. So this is my 7th jazz fest, and this was probably the best one that my wife and I have been to, including ones that I went to when I was at Tulane. I saw people that I've never heard of before. A lot of the undercards are really where it's at with these festivals. This guy, Seema funk, who I've never heard of before. This guy was the cuban James Brown. He basically made love to the entire crowd. And it was nothing short of magical. And it was incredible. It was absolutely incredible. So I highly recommend checking out the undercards, but Rolling Stones tomorrow, excuse my language, is going to be an absolute shit show. I don't know how people are going to not get trampled, but that's not my problem. I suppose it's going to be Altamonte again. Well, let's save the, we can save the music talk for the second half. Yeah. So, Justin, thank you so much for your time. Moishe and I had the pleasure of reading your book, The Crypto Legal Handbook. Why don't you just tell us a little bit about how you started to go about writing this book. What was the impetus? What was it like writing the book while having a full time job and familial obligations and all those kinds of things? Yeah. Appreciate it. Essentially, I get reached out to, and I'm sure you guys do as well, all the time, by young lawyers or law students who are interested in crypto or in the field, or even people who are not lawyers who were just wanting to learn more about the industry. And they would ask me, what can I do to learn more? What can I do to break in things like this? And my initial response was, start playing around with the technology. Send transactions. See if you think there's anything to all this. Follow a bunch of accounts on Twitter. Keep up with all the news that's moving from day to day. And then I would create, a list of what eventually became, almost hundred links to articles and blog posts and YouTube videos and podcasts. And I said, okay, if you get all. If you read all of this and, listen to all these videos and podcasts, you should have a pretty good sense. And, like, the feedback I got from, like, almost every person who I sent that to was that they just didn't look at any of it, and it was just too much. It was intimidating. Even people who I would like on board to work for me, they didn't even want to start clicking on all these links and just listening to different podcasts. I started to do, because I was getting these questions so much, is I started writing an article, and originally it was going to be just a LinkedIn post, and then it expanded to maybe it'll be a five or ten page article putting into context and categorizing all of these different resources. If someone said, where can I start? I could send this to them and they could say, okay, to learn more about securities, I can look at these, and here are the cases I should read and learn more about compliance. Here's what I should read, learn more about the history of some of these projects. Here's what I should read or listen to. And that just expanded and expanded. And at some point, it was a 25 page article. And I just said, it'll actually be easier for me to just, like, expand this out to, like, a book. And then at least I can, like, you know, guide the person through, like, my thoughts on, you know, the history of crypto, on, like, what you need to know about the technology, about the different areas of law. And before I knew it, I was just spending my free time writing a book. To answer your question, like, how do you balance, like, a very, like, ridiculously full time job with a project of this magnitude? And here's the honest trick, is you just commit to ruining a very small portion of every day for a consistently long amount of time. And if you write, it took me about a year to write, and it's about 250 pages long, so it's not so hard to write an average of half a page a day or three quarters of a page a day. That's interesting. I like that approach, the piecemeal tech, death by 1000 cuts, as it were. Um, how did you go about compiling the information? Was it solely from your work experience, from research, other external sources? What was the main way in which you did that? Because it's really informative and thorough. It's really excellent. It's going to sound crazy, but, there was very little, like, research that I needed to do. Like, it was just kind of all in my head. So what I would kind of do is, I'd say, like, all right, today I'm going to write the Department of Treasury section, and I would sit down, and I would just kind of, like, outline. Okay, here are the things that I think need to be addressed, and I just start to write it. And then, as I would refine and refine. And if you want, I can get it to, like, I have, like, a kind of a bizarre writing and editing process. But what I would do is, as I would keep refining, I would start to, like, okay, let me look at this case. Let me start to, like, pull different resources and things like that. So it came very naturally, and a lot of it was just, like, already stuck in my head. I just needed to get it out. But, um, so I, you know, so, so we, like, I saw this documentary about J. R. Token Tolkien, like, I don't know, 1520 years ago. Lord of the Rings. Right there. There you go. Yeah, You're a big nerd. So I. You nailed it in five minutes. Yeah. So, so they talked about his writing process, and basically what he would do is he would sit down and he would write chapter one, and then what he would do is when he got to chapter two, he would rewrite chapter one and then write chapter two, and then he would rewrite chapter one and two before he got to three. And I kind of did the same thing where I would write something, and then I would write the next section, and then before I would get to the third section, I would go back to the first, and I would try to, like, create ties and references that go back and forth. So a lot of the footnotes and sort of resources that are drawn in, and some of the references to future chapters were just done through that process. And I think as a result, it feels like a narrative, and it feels like someone guiding you through in a way that maybe appears more planned out than was the reality of it. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that really spoke to me as what I think is the youngest crypto person on this video right now is that when I started taking my journey, I really dove down the rabbit hole hard and became real degen aping into everything, buying all kinds of things irresponsibly. So, but it gave me a fundamental understanding of how these ecosystems work, how these projects work, what they mean, what's good, what doesn't, what's good, what's bad, and so on and so forth. And in this book, you talk about it a few times about how in order to represent people, in order to be an attorney in this space, in order to be a service professional, you need to understand it. And I'm sure you've seen it. There are so many practitioners out there who are crypto lawyers, but they don't know anything about crypto, or they scoff at it or they think it's a scam. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, you know, there's a different category that, like, upsets me even more, which is this, like, elderly financial regulatory attorney who believes that he's adopted this, like, sort of, like, folksy identity. It's like, oh, you know, I'm just too old to know about technology. It's like, you know, we're paying you $2,000 an hour to, like, figure out about the technology. Yeah, look, there. There's a lot of. There are many examples that I have in my head, and I won't. I won't list them because you'll be able to figure out who I'm talking about of public proceedings where the judge or the regulator may have said, why would someone use this currency? How does this work? And then the answer is, well, I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm not a crypto guy, and it's a missed opportunity. And my view on it is, if our advocates can't take the industry seriously and understand not only the mechanics but also the philosophy behind decentralized technologies, then you're never going to be able to convince a regulator or court what the perspective is. So yeah. I do think that if you want to be an actual crypto lawyer, it's probably helpful for you to understand the technology. You don't need to be a computer scientist. You don't need to know how to code. You probably don't need to ape into all sorts of meme coins and be reckless with your own finances. But it helps for you to understand, like, the practicalities of, like, these technologies and understand also, like, where this is all going, because a big part of, like, any type of regulation or any sort of court decision is not just like, well, what is happening right now, but what is the effect that this is going to have on the industry in the future? And I just don't see how you can understand and appreciate where things are going if you just take no interest at all in where things are right. We sure do know a lot of them. Right, mosh? Yeah. No, I mean, look, Kyle and I were reading the book and talking about it in preparation. This, like, yeah, exactly what you said. You know, onboarding, Kyle, onboarding other associates. Onboarding, you know, interns and law clerks. It's, how do you get them to download all this information? And so, you know, one of the ways you can do is you can hire for people that already have some of that and expressed interest and have some of the legal background but also have some of the technical interest. But there's still so much for even experienced attorneys to potentially learn. So I guess now this book is here, the next intern comes along. Now that there's beginning to be more resources, like this book, where should someone like that start? Yeah, I mean, to me, like, the reason I wrote this is I wanted to write it for, like, kind of two separate audiences. One was, like, law students and lawyers who wanted to learn more about this. And, you know, if you guys read it, it starts off assuming you not, you know, nothing about bitcoin. You've never heard of bitcoin, let alone all the, you know, Defi and Daos and a tease and everything that, like, might, you know, stem from there. And then it also assumes that you've, like, don't know the first thing about what the Department of Treasury does. You don't know the first thing about money transmission. You don't know the first thing about securities. So it's really meant to be, like, an accessible guide for, like, lawyers, but also, I think, as importantly, like, an accessible guide for people who need to eventually hire lawyers. And this is, like, the. I guess, the flip side of, like, the lawyer who doesn't give a shit about crypto are the entrepreneurs who sometimes, like, just don't have any interest in learning about the regulations, and they just put all their trust in these lawyers. So you have two different sets of people operating with half information, and sometimes it doesn't jive. So hopefully people will appreciate that. It really is a primer and it really is tried to be as accessible as possible. Yeah, I think. I mean, congrats on that. I think you really achieved that. And I think if we were to have the ability and time to write this book, which maybe none of us had, this is. This is certainly the kind of book that we would have written. So, you know, hats off to you for getting it done and publishing it. And it seems like it's already, you know, taken on a bit of success. So I hope that continues. Yeah, it'll be interesting because, like, it came out about a little over a week ago, and it's been, you know, people have, like, been very positive about it, but, like, no one's read. No one. Like, people bought it because, like, they. They followed me on LinkedIn or, like, they heard it, like, on, like, the Internet. But now people have, like, finally, like, gone through it a bit, so I'm getting, like, good feedback and people have been, like, really positive. So it's been. It's been nice. Let's. It's rare that things. That things are a pleasant surprise. In terms of. If I can ask a more specific question about just regulation in general, where do you think the US is? The United States has had it. Without getting into specifics, just what do you think is a better paradigm for us as practitioners to think about? Do we want overarching legislation to come out? Do we want to have more of a self contains, self regulation type of ecosystem? Like what Hong Kong is proposing? What are your thoughts on what the next five years are going to look like? Yeah, I mean, I don't think, like, a self regulatory agency or organization is, like, practical in the US for something like this. So there's really two paths. Right. The first is you kind of leave it as it is right now, which is like, every state sort of regulates it and one way or the other, or you pick a federal regulator and you say, okay, you're tasked with it, and you kind of, like, get away from, like, the semantics of, you know, is this a security? Is this a commodity? Where is the line? And you just say, everything is. Everything that is a digital asset is sort of, like, regulated by this. This agency. And I, you know, I really don't know. I really don't know what's the, the best long term. I think they both have their advantages and disadvantages. From my perspective, though, you just have to pick a route and give clarity. And I think what will happen, you see this in a lot of industries, is absent regulation that is specifically designed to kill the industry it's regulating, but just reasonable regulations. The broader crypto industry will figure out a way to comply with it and will be successful. But it's the uncertainty of it all that I think is causing everyone to have a lot of frustration. Right. Well, fortunately, we're in an election year, and so for sure we're going to have some clarity within the next six months. You have more faith than I do in this election. I don't have a lot of faith, no matter what happens. Quite frankly, I'm curious why you think, I mean, without getting into specifics, I think there's certain activities which are more obviously activities that maybe could or should be regulated. But I do think there's a lot of activities that perhaps, I mean, getting away from just centralized. There could be more decentralized things that are perhaps less financially motivated that could get into a more self regulated. Especially I'm thinking about like, NFTs and IP and domains and things like that that people aren't really talking about in the maybe mainstream regulatory sphere. Why do you think there hasn't been any interest in perhaps a self regulatory or sort of like, regulation by consensus type approach that has come up in other tech industries, like, prior to crypto? You know, I think there's been, there's been ideas of like, how do we self regulate? And even if you look at something like Coinbases trust, right, which is like the travel rule, like, that's somewhat of a self regulatory, but they're always, like, optional. When Kyle was talking about, like a self regulatory organization, I thought he was talking about something like finRa, which is like, it's self regulatory by, you know, basically regulation. Like, it's mandatory. I think that there are, like, best practices that are going to continue to develop the idea of the broader defi ecosystem. Just agreeing to a set of standards is in some ways, like, antithetical to defi. Right. So I, you know, I don't know, I don't know what that would look like now, what it might end up looking like. And I've not, like, thought through this, but like, in the same way we have, like, technical standards, right? Like, you know, you have like, ERc 20 tokens, right? Like, maybe there will be some sort of, like, compliance type of, you know, standard that's like, you know, built in at like a protocol level. But I haven't seen any proposals for that, and I. I don't know how that would even necessarily work, work out. I know that Rebecca Reddick has proposed the idea of DeFi compliance, and I think these are all really interesting topics that are still being explored, but I don't know of any that are going to be able to be implemented in the near future. Yeah, I think near future. That's interesting. One of the things that made me think of was an example of self regulatory. Like what I was thinking, and I've had conversations along these lines, are the way that Internet domains are self regulated, and those are done through ICANN, which is a basically opt in contractual regime where every registrar agrees to. So I could see how that philosophy could potentially be consistent with DeFi, at least for some types of use cases. But we're probably five or ten years away from any sort of serious consideration or something like that. I would imagine. I imagine that how seriously the decentralized finance and Dow side of the industry takes that is going to depend on how the case law presents itself with regard to, basically, if you are creating a technology that allows people to engage in activity, that, had it been centralized, would be regulated, and you have liability for that activity, that might create a bit of a movement. But I think right now, for the most part, the DeFi space is still of the position that if you just create the code, that doesn't constitute activity. And, you know, it's a really interesting question that eventually needs to. It's going to need to be decided by the courts, because you have cases like the Bernstein case is one where it says, okay, if you're creating code and that's it, it's just source code that's protected by the First Amendment. And then you have these computational speech cases and the Groxster case at the Supreme Court on the other side, which says, well, actually, if you're creating code and that code is somehow usable for activity, then maybe there's, like, liability in certain contexts. So where that line is with return with respect to, like, financial activity, I think is still sort of up to. Up for debate and kind of the fodder of law reviews at this point. And then you have the added issue of courts are going to come down in different ways with respect to these different cases in different jurisdictions. You have state courts and federal courts, and it's just so, you know, spread out here in the US that you could have, you know, two similar cases brought into different jurisdictions and have completely disparate results sometimes. And then what? So it flies right in the face of the idea of a consensus. Yeah, no, that's true. I mean, I think there's an argument to be said that, like, that's, um, that's a feature, not a bug. Right. Like, like, there. It's, you know, it's. It's a scarier country if there's just, like, a court of first appeal, whatever it is. Right. Where, like, once you get, like, some judge in Louisiana to decide something, that's gonna be the law until a discretionary court decides not to. Like, you know, there's. It can be sometimes be helpful that you have, like, a slower process, but, you know, there's lots of examples where you. You have, like, permanent circuit splits, and the Supreme Court's not interested in resolving them. Right. And then hearkening back to what you were talking about before. A lot of times, the people who are adjudicating these cases aren't familiar with the assets. They don't know about them, and the people on their staff don't know about them. It just adds an extra wrinkle to how are these people deciding the fate of these assets if they don't really understand the fundamental nature of what these assets really are? It's really a quagmire. Yeah. Or even, like, what is the point in the first place? Right. I think the reason to learn about and to use the technology and to kind of, like, be invested, not, like, in a monetary sense, but, like, just be, like, interested in where all this is, is. Occasionally, you do have to explain this to someone who is not familiar with these concepts that we think about every day. And it's like, I don't know if you've ever taught before, but the way you learn a subject is you teach it. I learned a lot about crypto, just having to put all of my thoughts together for this book. And as a result, you're able to explain things in a way that you can use analogies, you can simplify concepts, you can talk about ideals rather than, like, specifics in order to, like, explain what the purpose of all this is. And this is the problem with, like, a lot of the lawyers who end up getting hired to represent the industry is that, you know, they take this position of, like, I'm a litigator, I'm a regulatory attorney. Anything that's in front of me, I can figure out, because I'm like, I have, like, kind of, like, a generalist practice, but at the end of the day, if you ask them, like, okay, well, how does self custody actually work? They have no idea. Right? Yeah. What does self custody mean? They have no idea. Okay, well, how are you supposed to explain that? Like, control is not present for, you know, unlicensed money transmission claim if you don't really understand what control is in, like, a completely digital sense. Right. And, like, I remember, like, I had this issue, like, early in my career, like, I don't know, 2015, maybe 2016, where a person came to me. They were told by another firm that their non custodial wallet basically was a money transmitter and needed licenses in 48 states. And the lawyer didn't know what a non custodial wallet is. He just assumed wallet custody, and he said, okay, it'll cost you a million dollars and take you, like, four years to possibly get this. So what does that mean for the. For the client? It means that your lawyer's advice is basically go out of business. Right. Because how. How could you do it? So the person came to me and said, all right, you know, let me explain to you what, you know, a wallet is. And I was like, no, no, I get it. Like, you don't have custody. You don't hold the private keys. There's no custard. There's no custody control there. And that's really helpful at sort of, like, the end of the day, and we're 15 years into this experiment, and there are still lawyers out there who just are like, well, I'm not a crypto person, and they're all right. Yeah. The good thing that's happening is that people who are knowledgeable and really good lawyers have now sort of aged in to. To, like, kind of a senior position at a lot of these firms. So whereas it used to be entirely, like, when I first started, I was, you know, when I first started representing crypto companies, I was a second year lawyer, and what I would do is I would, like, quarterback, like, my friend's cases to, like, the senior, like, you know, financial regulators, regulatory attorneys, and just, like, kind of translate between the two. But I had no authority to, like, give any advice. Right. I was like. I was. I was on a short leash, and I was just basically taking hands. But over a long enough period of time, you know, you end up developing your own book and kind of breaking out the practice, and then you do. So you're actually starting to see, like, some very, very good law firms that have, like, I would say, like, ultra high end, like, crypto knowledge. Yeah. It's interesting how that's developed and I think you said somewhere, you know, along the lines of, you know, you have to, you have to kind of know a baseline of like everything and be a generalist of everything, but then specialize in, you know, very narrow areas. And I think that's the, you know, from my perspective, that seems like the right way to approach that. So, I mean, how would you suggest someone that is that second year attorney now that maybe is trying to learn the ropes at a firm? And this is something, I have this conversation a lot. I'm sure you do too. How do you balance specialization with generalization? Where should you emphasize learning to the extent you have agency in that? Yeah, I took the position early on that I wanted to be able to address any type of question that came through my door from like the entire industry. So, you know, it's like I wanted to learn enough to be dangerous and then I know, I know where to go if I need like something like hyper technical, right? So if someone came, I'm not an IP lawyer by any stretch of the imagination, but like, if someone came to me with like most IP issues, I could like, you know, I have a pretty good sense of like, where the law is. And then I also have like a good rolodex or whatever the equivalent is now of people I can call to get specific help. And that's also helpful because I also know enough that if an IP lawyer is telling you something that doesn't feel right to me, I know enough to really challenge you guys know this, for a lot of lawyers, they'll tell you something. And then if you push back, the answer changes very, very quickly. So having a broad kind of set of skills is important. I would say the most important thing and the absolute best thing that ever happened to me in my career was I landed at the right firm with the right mentor and I had someone who really saw that there was something happening in this space and I seemed to have my pulse on it and gave me protection within the firm to explore this. Interesting. And then also part of it is like, you got to kind of take a risk with your career at some point. Like early on I, you know, you got to imagine like, I'm a first year lawyer at, you know, mid to large size law firm and I'm turning down work because I wasn't interested in it. And I was like, I don't want it. I don't want to do this bankruptcy work. I don't want to do this insurance work. And I was like, at the time when I got hired, I was like, I'm only doing First Amendment work, and this is before, like, you know, there was any such thing as a crypto. So I was hired by a guy who was doing, like, exclusively, like, first Amendment constitutional litigation. That was all I was interested in. I was turning down basically all other work, and I was just kind of trying to fill my time with other things that interested me. And my perspective early on in my career was, you know, the worst thing that they can do is fire me. And, you know, the worst thing that could happen to me is that all of a sudden, I get stuck doing bankruptcy, you know, like foreclosure cases or something like that. And then I'm ten years into it, and I'm doing pip work or something like that. And I hate my career, so. You do? I think it's super risky, and it worked out for me. But I remember, like, there were a lot of people at my former firm who kind of, like, were saying, you know, you really got to be careful. Like, you know, you sure you should. You sure this is the reputation you want? And, you know, it's, you got to take a risk with your career at some point. It's a really interesting and really good advice, I think, for young lawyers, you know, want to take risk, take risks, but also, it's similar along the lines of what you're saying. It's, you know, I've been doing this almost 20 years, and I know a lot about know m and A and securities transactions, and just by virtue of doing it, I know enough about tax to answer some basic questions, but I know enough not to commit malpractice. So if the question comes up and I don't know, it's actually okay to say, you know what? I don't know the answer to that. And I think a lot of lawyers, young lawyers in particular, they're terrified of those words. They think that if you say I don't know or I'm not sure. Let me get back to you, they'll lose the client. And, you know, it just. Very slippery slope. But also along the lines of what you're saying, I've been doing this so long, if I have to read another operating agreement, I might set myself on fire. It's really wonderful to have a new well. So, you know, like, I was doing all this, like, first amendment work, and I had, you know, quite a bit of work to do in that area. And then I started to have, like, friends of mine who were starting, you know, crypto companies, so I would bring them in. And, I mean, you gotta imagine, like, this is like, this, like 20 2013, late 2013, early 2014. Like, it wasn't like sophisticated operations, right? These are like, people are starting a business. They had need, like general business, you know, sort of advice in a lot of cases. So what I would do is I would, I would sort of basically just like, volunteer to take on cop contractual drafting assignments. I would, like, want to learn. Okay, how does a cap table work? How does a fundraising work and things like that. And I would really try to, like, in my, like, free time, this is before I had any kids. In my free time, I would really try to, like, say, like, okay, I don't know any, like, someone came in and they wanted, you know, they needed, like, a private place of memorandum. I don't know how to. I don't know how to do that. Yeah, I don't know how to do that. What do I need? And then you start to, like, expand your knowledge from, from these experiences. Sure. It was, it was surprising to me because the firm was, like, very popular. Like, they let me do this and they were, like, supportive in a lot of ways because I, you know, I was, like, bringing in a bit of business. But it surprises me, like, sometimes I'll meet lawyers and they'll be like, I'm, oh, I'm a 33 act attorney. I don't know anything about the 34 act. I was like, it's right there. Right? Or, like, you know, or, like, you know, you'll go to. This used to happen all the time in, like, you know, the early days, which is you would go to someone and they were a securities lawyer, and they would say, okay, here's the advice, you know, from a securities perspective, and you read their advice and you realize, like, oh, you're, you're completely stepping in it in, like, 50 different states or whatever it was, 48 states, like, on the money transmission side. So you're basically just, like, trading in one set of issues for another sometimes. And my view is, like, the best thing that I could do is, like, learn as much as I can about the business. So, you know, I could sit on, you know, I can, I can, I can figure out what needs to happen and where. And that if I press on this side, it's not going to push something on this side over, right? Yeah, I think, I think that holistic approaches is great, and I think that's also a reminder to us and the other, perhaps more senior attorneys out there that our ethos is certainly to create the firm that we want to work at, but to create those pathways for those junior attorneys to be entrepreneurial, to allow them to get their work done, but in those gaps, to find those opportunities where Kyle and I are thinking about this. So it's hard to also allow that. But it sounds like you had a great mentor and a great firm that enabled that. Yeah. And certainly, I think Kyle and I feel the same way that, you know, there wasn't a digital asset group here, you know, four years ago, and now there is. Right. So it's so much about. So much about everything is just luck and timing and being around the right people. Right. So I think that's, like, a big part of, like, where I am. It's just, I honestly, like, I really. I really try to tell people, like, take seriously the place that you get your first job. Right. And, like, to me, like, it was just, like, the. The luck of my life that I, like, I met this partner. He offered me, like, a job at the lunch, like, our first lunch meeting, and he became, like, you know, as close as a father to me for, like, several years. He passed away in 2020, but, like, he. He was. He just took me under his wing, and he was, like, one of these guys who was, like, at, like, the later end of his career, and he didn't have anything else to prove. You know, he had already made. Yeah, he made the money, and he just, like, enjoyed bringing up people in the law. And he, like, spent a lot of time training me in, like, constitutional, like, brief writing and things like that. And, you know, he really wanted the best. And there were other firms that I could have gone to. They were probably paid me more or more prestigious or, you know, there were all sorts of reasons, but, like, people matter at some point, and you can't just say, like, okay, what's the best school to go to? Whatever's the highest rank on the top. You know, top 14 I get into. What's the best firm to get to? Well, whatever's the highest rank on the Amlaw 100. It's like, nope, that's not the way to do it. Right. What's the best crypto law school? It's like, yeah, the best crypto law school is the one that has. Has the best weather and will give you the best tuition. Oh, the best weather. Yeah. From a, um, law to a uf law grad, it's like, yeah, yeah, that's right. Weather's not too bad and too lane. Yeah, that's true. That the. The other. The other thing that I always stress and, like, I have, like, a healthy disrespect for authority I guess. And I never, like, believe that, like, the person who, like, you know, there's always, like, a couple. Couple guys at every law firm who, like, wear a bowtie and they think that they're like, you know, John houseman in the paper chase and, like, oh, you know, the law is this mystery, and, you know, you really. It's like, it's not. It's like almost nothing that any of us do is beyond comprehension of anyone with, like, a basic, like, reading comprehension. Right. And. And, like, being able to have the attitude of, like, okay, yeah, I can learn. I can learn securities law. I can learn mergers. I can learn tax. I can learn all of these things, and it's not going to. I don't need 15 years of each to, like, be competent enough to, like, talk about it. I think that was, like, something that I maybe. Maybe I overestimated when I was, like, really young. And now I realize, like, a lot of it is actually, like, somewhat difficult. You know, it's kind of difficult to, like, really get, like, a good. A good foundation. But I do really believe that, like, you. You can learn more than one thing. And you probably should outside of the SEC CFTC financial regulatory space in writing this book or researching the book or where do you think are the most interesting legal issues that maybe haven't been addressed in the mainstream? Perhaps maybe didn't even make the cutting board for the book? Where do you think? If I'm an enterprising young attorney, I'm not an SEC person, I'm not a CFC. Where would you spend some energy entirely on the constitutional issues is where I fall. There's absolutely nothing in this book, for the most part, about the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment. It's touched on a little bit in the privacy section, but I wrote an article several years ago about the First Amendment implications of bitcoin, called bitcoin of speech. And, like, to me, like, that's the most, like, intellectually interesting areas. And, like, this idea, I kind of call it, like, pragmatic constitutionalism, which is like, a phrase that, like. I mean, it's not like I just made it up, but, like. But it's like this idea that, like, if you have fundamental rights and those fundamental rights can be taken away by a five to four decision, then they're not fundamental rights. Right? So this idea that, like, okay, there are First Amendment or Fourth Amendment or Fifth Amendment protections for all of these different types of associational or expressive activities, that's only as true as you can get advocates to craft convincing enough, like, policy arguments to courts to demonstrate that it's actually towards our better nature and we should be protecting them. And this, like, goes back to the idea that you want your lawyers to really understand not only the technology, but, like, the philosophy behind a lot of this, like, the world of crypto. And, you know, we're seeing that play out in, like, the samurai and, like, the tornado cash cases. Right. You're seeing that play for sure. Yeah. There are other even, like, major questions, doctrine and things like that, right? Yeah. So you're so, to me, like, you know, I was, like, a law nerd, and, like, my first love was I kind of like these, like, writing, like, long briefs and kind of thinking about those things. So, like, to me, like, if I were to say, like, what's the area that's most interesting? It would be like, sort of, how do your rights impact with technology beyond that? I think, like, it's mostly, like, financial regulations is where it gets really interesting, and everything else is just like, you know, business law, corporate law, patent law, and there's gonna be some, like, interaction. But, you know, there was a guy who I knew, and he was, like, a lawyer in the nineties, and he had his. I saw he had a business card he showed me from the nineties, and it was, like, his name, and it said, like, Internet lawyer. And, you know, like, he wasn't. He was an Internet lawyer. And I. And now, you would never call yourself an Internet lawyer because, like, the Internet is everything. And I kind of take the shit, like, right now, like, I'm a crypto lawyer, and you guys are crypto lawyers. And if all goes well, you know, it'll be a little cringe to, like, say that you're a crypto lawyer in 15 years, because crypto is just. It's like saying you're a money lawyer. What does that mean? You're a network lawyer. It all kind of integrates itself into, like, the broader definition of, like, Internet and technology. Mm hmm. That's a. I do know a bunch of people that are still, like, Internet. Lawyers, so they probably wear the bowtie, right? Exactly. I mean, that's a question I get all the time. It's like, you're a crypto lawyer. What does that mean? How do you advise on crypto? And it's like, well, these people come to us still to this day. It's like, oh, well, you know, me and my partners, you know, have this thing that we're doing. It's like, oh, cool. What kind of entity do you have, huh? What, do you have a partnership agreement? No. Why would we have that? And it's. You know. You know, it's like, well, okay, you have a business. You have a. It's. It's just a. It's a. Another. It's another better mousetrap, you know, basically just for the same thing. Have. Have you guys ever been in house? I have not. Have you much? I. Not. Not. I've interned and worked in legal departments, but not since graduating law school. One of the reasons, like, going out, like, at some point in your career. Right, right. Go in house and just, like, experience that. But, like, here's the reason why I think, like, my life is better in house than as an outside counsel. It's that. Two reasons. One is I recall, like, even, like, very early on, people would come to me, and they would tell, okay, this is a project. This is the business I want to create. Whatever. And it was frustrating for me to know more about the person's business than they did. Yeah, right. And being in house is this idea, like, you can take, like, long term ownership of a project, and you're. You know, the other thing about it, which I think is, like, it's just really satisfying for at least a part of your life, is that, like, let's say I go to you and I go, Moishe, I have a real big problem. You're the expert at this. Here's my issue. If you can fix this, you're going to save my company a million dollars, $10 million. And then you go. And you go, okay, I got to drop everything. You're working over. You know, you're working over, like, the weekends. You're up at late at night, you save the day, and you go, and you take your answer, and you give it to me, and I go, hey, guys, look what I did. I just. I just. I just. I just saw this huge problem, and I go, Moish, thank you so much. Here's your hourly rate, and you get paid. And then, you know, my stock options get better, right? My. Like, I have. Like, I have this long term pride, and I was. I was. I was going really frustrated when I was as outside counsel that it was never really my victory, and I never really felt like I was part of that team, even though I was friends with these people. Everyone was really happy. Everyone had a really good working relationship. But there's always that disconnect, which is okay. In order for me to go and talk to you, the problem has to rise to the level of outside counsel rates. And what you don't realize is like, the amount that the types of issues that just kind of, like, bubble up on, like, a daily basis that never get talked to by outside counsel because you just kind of figure it out internally. And that, to me, is like, where, like, that's, that's where the special sauce is, is realizing all of the non existential issues that occur for a company that you just need to, like, juggle and deal with. That's where, like, a lot of the fun is. Yeah, that makes complete sense. And I definitely get that and see that in both directions. And, yeah, you. You save the company email that's like, you know, takes you twelve minutes to write, but it generates, you know, a million dollars in surplus value and, you know, great. I mean, one of my partners say, like, that's. That's the life we chose kind of thing. There's another aspect to it that, like, has, like, made my life a lot better, which is when I would meet someone as outside counsel. Right. I would meet, like, I would meet you, like, a super interesting person at a conference or, you know, whatever, and we connect and we'd be talking about, like, what they were working on. You know, things are vibing, right. And in the back of my mind, I had to always have, like, oh, I wonder if this person can become a client and pay me more than $1,000 an hour to talk to me. And there's this natural transactional mentality that develops your interactions. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I think that speaks to. I'm sorry to interrupt, but a larger question, which I don't know if some idealistic crypto dude is going to solve, which is, and I've been having this conversation quite often, which is the way that law firms get paid and the dependency on the hourly rate and the dissatisfaction. I think largely that a lot of clients and a lot of probably more law firms than clients have with most of the alternative fee structures, and that the reality is, for most clients, for most matters, most of the time, the hourly rate just makes more sense. And whether, I don't know if it's necessarily crypto that's going to solve that, but certainly entrepreneurial people working in a new industry thinking about, like, public good funding and, like, there has to be a way to crack that egg. And I don't know if you spend much time thinking about that. No, I mean, not really. I mean, the incentive structures at large, especially large law firms, are perverse. So, for example, let's say. Let's say me and Kyle are first year lawyers at a big law firm, and let's say that Kyle is brilliant. He's the best associate to ever, like, join this firm, and I am just like a complete putz, right? Kyle is being tasked with writing Supreme Court briefs. He's doing really haughty research. Right. That's taxing sort of work. You can only, like, you know, you can only do so much of it during, during a day. At the end of the year, he bills. Let's say he has a really good year. He bills 16, 50 hours doing the most complicated research ever. And me, they don't trust me with anything, and they stick me in a warehouse doing doc review, and I built 2300 hours doing doc review, and guess what? I'm going to become partner, and I'm going to get a giant bonus, and Kyle's going to be exited out of the firm. So here's the real problem, is that what is Kyle to do? He only has two options. He could either continue to fail in his career, or sometimes that hour long paper that he wrote, well, maybe it took an hour and a half, and all of a sudden, the 1600 hours sometimes comes 2200 hours. And you'd be surprised how many times in a law firm you see someone kind of padding their hours, and maybe they have, like, an anniversary dinner and they can't work 8 hours today. But if they don't work 8 hours today, they have to make up for it at some point, because every two weeks, your law firms, like a team manager or whatever, will tell you, hey, you're kind of slacking on these hours. So it creates a really, I think, unethical incentive structure. That being said, like, flat rates sound great, but the flat rates are designed such that one side is winning or the other side is winning. So I don't know what the. For a lot of areas of law, you don't necessarily need. It's hard to predict. Litigation, it's almost impossible to predict. But occasionally you have something like this used to have with money transmission surveys, where a firm would put together a 50 state survey for money transmission, and that was basically their internal cheat sheet. And then you go to them and they go, hey, you know what you need? You need a money transmission survey, $40,000. And what are they doing? They're just taking that and putting it into a different form, and they're charging you a flat rate. You think, oh, great. Least is predictable. But in reality, you know, it's not necessarily lined up. At the time, there was a story, so I was in this first amendment group, and there was this old timer who used to represent the Miami Herald, and he just knew everyone. He was like, king of Miami sort of guy. One of the folks from the herald went to him and said, this all happened like, years before. I'm not, like, telling, like, client secrets. This happened in, like, I think the sixties. So, like, you know, this wasn't, this wasn't my client. This is like one of these, like, lore stories that were told at the firm. So, you know, editor of the Herald or something, like, comes to him and says, one of my reporters wouldn't give up a source. They throw him in jail. We need to go and we need to file, like, an emergency. You know, tro, we need to throw everything on this. What's it going to cost? And the guy said, I can get the guy out of jail for, I forget, $10,000, $20,000, whatever it is,$20,000. And he goes, okay, do whatever you need to do. An hour later, he calls him up. He goes, all right, he's being released. And he goes, what? What did you do? What did you file? He's like, I called my friend the judge, and I told him that, you know, I didn't want to have to file all these papers. Let him out. And that let out. And he goes, okay, well, I'm not paying you $20,000 for that. And he goes, why? You know, we agreed on the price. He goes, it took an hour of their time. And he said, well, you know, it took me 35 years to know who to call. Yeah, politically. And you're paying for the 35 years. So maybe there's, maybe there's something to that. No, it's a great point. And just to add a slight wrinkle to that, you know, in addition to the juxtaposition of the hourly model creates perverse incentives. Fixed fees create a situation where it's, you know, the client says, just one more question, one more question, and that turns into 30,000 questions. The other thing is that it's sometimes difficult to quantify exactly what it is, which is a perfect example of your story. You know, this pen costs fifty cents to make. I sell it for a dollar. People can understand that. If it's, I need this project on, how much does it cost? It's like, well, I don't know. It depends. And people really have a difficult time wrapping their head around. So it's a really difficult business model to navigate, even for us veterans who've been doing it for a long time. This is why I think there's a pretty amazing opportunity. Even for people just starting now in crypto, because I do believe that the people I know who are the best crypto lawyers, they just know all of the cases that have occurred. They know all the news cycles that have occurred. Right. Why? Because they've just seen it in front of them. Like, it's just. Okay. Like, like, for me, like, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to write this is because, like, I was thinking to myself, like, if I were just graduating and I wanted to get into crypto, like, I just wouldn't know where to start. There's just so much. And I just had the benefit of, like, just being there and being like, oh, yeah, okay. I know, I know who that is. I remember when that happened. And you get to, like, you know, so, like, when someone comes, if substant happen now, but like, that's like council, if someone would come to me and they would say, you know, I wanna, I wanna do like a, like a prediction market, can I do that? I wouldn't have to go and say, like, oh, let me research prediction markets and crypto. I I know the case. Like, no, that that's already, like, I know exactly where to look and I'll see if, like, anything else happened that I, I didn't find. But, like, it's just sort of, like, top of mind because I got to experience it, right? Like, it's just, it's almost like a biographical narrative because I've been living it. And I think it's so important for people coming up to, like, really try to appreciate, like, the history and understanding, like, how we got here, how the case law developed. Sort of, like, I think even, like, the personalities involved in a lot of these discussions are representative of, like, what the industry was and where it is now. Like, if you look at, like, who were the most popular voices in 2014 versus who are the most popular voices now, you can kind of tell, like, how the character of the industry and its sort of priorities have changed. And, you know, I think there are a lot of places to learn about securities. There are a lot of places to learn about, like, commodities. There's not a lot of places, I think, to just, like, understand, like, you know, in a little package, like, how did we get here from, like, a lawyer's perspective. And that's where I think this, like, maybe has any benefit. Yeah, that, and we need a compendium of the main character of the week for the last, like, ten years. That's true. Well, Justin, you've been extremely gracious with your time. We really have loved chatting with you. But before we let you go, what's coming up next? You have another book that you're kicking around upstairs, or, you know, what's coming up next for you? Yeah, I mean, I've always, like, been a writer, so I've always have. Like, I've always been in, like, the middle of, like, different projects. And, you know, here's the thing is, once you, like, get the book and you see it and you get, like, a positive reaction, you're just. You forget how awful it was to write, and you forget, like, how much time you spent away from your family. So I'm being cautious before jumping into a project. And I also promised, like, my wife, who's pregnant, that I wouldn't abandon her to just spend my nights at Starbucks writing again. But I think if I were to put the next thing together, I think it's going to be a fiction kind of a fiction book, a John Grisham style sort of fiction book in the world of crypto forensics. Oh, that sounds. That's, like. Think about, like, John. Think about, like, the Da Vinci Code and. Yeah. Meets the firm. Meets, like, you know, The Crypto Legal Handbook. Yeah. Have you read tracers in the dark? Like, the. No, I don't. There's other. There's a few on there that's. It's a. It's nonfiction, but it's. It's the. It's the story of, like, the Silk Road investigative team, and. Oh, yeah, I. I think I've seen the person who wrote it on a. Yeah, I think it's green. I'll drop it in the show notes. I'll send an email afterwards. But, yeah, there's. There's some actually really good non nonfiction, and if you go to. There's some, like, tracing events I can bring you to. You can probably interview some of the people that are. That are involved in those cases if you don't already know them. I'm, like. I'm a, like, a huge proponent of, like, engaging in, like, frivolous activities, like. Like, art projects and music projects and things like that. So the last year has been spent working on, like, what I would say is, like, a. You know, a pretty serious, like. Like, in that. In that, like, the book takes itself seriously, but I'm. I think, like, I need to, like, let loose a bit and start to play around a little more. That's. Congratulations. Thank you. That's really wonderful. Dear wife and I understand that you'll be providing some updates over time on your website. Can you tell us a little more about that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, not to bore you, but if I may go on, like, a slight rant about, like, the state of crypto textbooks. Please do. Okay. So they cost so much money. They're like three or$400 sometimes to these, like, kids that are, like, captive in class. And the problem is that they all go through the same, let's say, three or four publishers, and they're either one of two styles. They're like an actual textbook, and they're so big and dense to justify their price that they use them for three or four years. So imagine using a textbook from 2019 right now. Like, it doesn't. It doesn't help you at all. Arguably my book, which came out a week ago, should be updated by this point. So the idea. Right. Yeah. It's impossible to keep up. You can't keep up with everything all the time. It's not. So here's where I feel like I really cracked the code. Okay. So I decided not to do. I didn't want to go through a publisher. Right. I've had a lot of, like, bad experiences with publishers before, mostly trying to, like, exert, like, a ridiculously long timeline on what I think is a finished product. Right? So this is self published. And what that means is, like, through Amazon KDP, which is print on demand books, right? So when you buy a book, Amazon prints it and then sends it to. If I wanted to, I could update the manuscript tonight, upload it by Friday evening. If you buy it, you'll get the uploaded version. There's like a 48 or 72 hours, basically window. So my idea is, when something like blockbuster happens, no matter what it is, the coinbase decision comes out tomorrow. I'm updating it as soon as that comes out. So whoever picks it up gets that update. In the interim, there's all these kind of little things, things that occur. I did two things. One is I created a newsletter, which every week I'll just send you. Here are the five or six things that happen that I think you should probably just be aware of, and here are the links. And then I put all of the footnotes to the website on the cryptolegalhandbook.com resources. And as interim updates occur, where the footnote for that activity is, I'm just going to put in, like, red. Here's the new update. So that way, even if you're reading this and you're like, okay, what happened to, like, the mango markets? Right case? Well, mango markets, like, his. His being found guilty occurred like, a day after I published the book. So I'll just update, update the resources. It's not worth like printing a new copy of the book. It's kind of a small update. Right. But at least, you know, oh, you know, I'm interested in like this mega markets hack. If you go to the resources section, you'll see. Okay. And here's the update. So I think that's like the best way that I can like try to keep up with this. We'll see how long it lasts. But so far, like, I'm still excited about it. It's amazing. Look forward to seeing the updates. I also want to see an intellectual property section specifically so we can work on that, talk about it. You know, I might need help writing it. I mean, honestly, like, of all the areas where I have like a bit of like a, like an experience gap, I'd say is like in, in, I would say like heavy ip, right? Like I've done, I've done a bit of it, but like, I don't, I don't know, like the first thing about patents. Yep. Well, it's interesting. So that, and the first amendment, I think are areas where we can either get the community public goods funding or community input to collab and expand and love to see how this evolves from here. And this is fantastic. Cool. Yeah, absolutely. The book, The Crypto Legal Handbook. The author is Justin Wales. Justin, thank you so much for your time. It's been wonderful having you on Block and Order and we hope to have you again and we look forward to keeping up with you going forward. All right, thanks, guys. Thanks, Justin. Take care. Well, Moish, that about wraps it up for this week's episode of Block and Order. Thank you everybody, for listening and watching. Please like and subscribe if you like the content. It really helps us out. Special thank you to producer producer Chris. Without him, we cannot make this episode possible. Remember that nothing contained herein is meant to be construed as legal advice or investment advice. Please consult your own advisors and attorneys if you're going to take the plunge. Down the rabbit hole. I'm Kyle Lawrence. And I'm Moish Peltz. Take care. Thanks, everybody.