BakerHostetler has announced the launch of a Crypto Asset Disputes team, a dedicated practice focused on litigation and arbitration involving crypto assets, blockchain technology and emerging digital markets. With the move, BakerHostetler becomes the first Am Law 100 firm to establish a dedicated Crypto Asset Disputes team. The Am Law 100 is an annual ranking of the highest-grossing U.S. law firms published by The American Lawyer.

The new team was born out of the firm's existing Chambers-ranked Web3 and Digital Assets team, which launched in 2018. It formalizes and expands BakerHostetler's long-standing work in complex litigation at the intersection of digital assets, disputes and market infrastructure.

The team will be led by New York partner Joanna F. Wasick, a seasoned litigator and a founding member of the firm's Web3 and Digital Assets team.

"Crypto disputes are no longer an emerging issue; they are a core business risk for market participants across the digital asset ecosystem," Wasick said. "BakerHostetler has been litigating and arbitrating crypto asset disputes for years, across commercial, regulatory, insolvency and enforcement matters. This team provides a formal platform for those capabilities and brings together BakerHostetler's deep litigation bench, technical fluency and practical experience in digital assets to help clients navigate disputes that often move quickly, cross borders and involve novel questions of law and technology."

The Crypto Asset Disputes team targets matters involving commercial and tort disputes, securities and commodities litigation, government investigations and enforcement actions, asset tracing and recovery, bankruptcy-related disputes, cross-border proceedings, and other matters arising from blockchain-enabled business models and transactions.

The launch arrives amid a sustained stretch of crypto-related litigation in U.S. courts. The November 2022 collapse of the FTX exchange produced sprawling bankruptcy and related recovery proceedings, and the SEC's 2023 lawsuits against major exchanges Coinbase and Binance extended years of courtroom fights over how digital asset businesses are regulated. Several of the matters the new team will handle — bankruptcy-related disputes, asset tracing and recovery, and cross-border proceedings — overlap directly with the issues those cases raised.

Ted Kobus, who leads the firm's Digital Assets and Data Management Practice Group, said the new Crypto Asset Disputes team marks another step forward in BakerHostetler's dedication to being at the center of legal issues involving the data life cycle, which includes crypto assets.

"Simply understanding cryptocurrency is not enough. Clients need advisers who understand how digital assets intersect with data, technology, regulation and enterprise risk. These teams bring those capabilities together under one roof, allowing us to provide practical, business-focused counsel from prevention through resolution," Kobus said.

The firm also announced that Isabelle Corbett Sterling will lead its Digital and Innovative Markets team, which she helped launch. It was the first team of its kind at an Am Law 100 firm and focuses on the convergence of traditional financial services, digital assets and other emerging financial technologies. The team advises market participants on regulatory, enforcement, product development, transactional and market structure issues involving traditional and innovative financial products and platforms.

"Digital assets are increasingly intertwined with traditional financial markets, as clients frequently operate in both. Clients need counsel who understand both the technology and the regulatory architecture that govern financial markets," Corbett Sterling said. "The Digital and Innovative Markets team is built to help clients develop, evaluate, adopt and defend traditional and innovative market structures and products while navigating a fast-changing legal and regulatory environment."

That intertwining has become more tangible for traditional finance since January 2024, when U.S. regulators approved spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, tying digital assets directly into conventional brokerage and advisory channels, followed by spot Ether funds later that year.

BakerHostetler's Crypto Asset Disputes and Digital and Innovative Markets teams will be fully integrated with the firm's nationally recognized Web3 and Digital Assets team, led by BakerHostetler Partner Robert A. Musiala Jr.

"Our Web3 and Digital Assets team has grown and evolved alongside the market from its earliest stages," Musiala said. "The launch of the Crypto Asset Disputes team and the continued development of the Digital and Innovative Markets team reflect BakerHostetler's continued commitment to investing in and expanding in step with new technologies to support clients across the full digital asset life cycle."

The legal framework underlying much of this work remains unsettled. Courts and regulators continue to delineate when digital assets fall under securities or commodities law — the central question in the SEC's long-running case against Ripple over the XRP token — and Congress has yet to pass comprehensive digital asset market-structure legislation, leaving many questions to be worked out through litigation, enforcement and rulemaking, the same channels in which the new team will operate.

Comprising more than 100 attorneys and technologists, BakerHostetler's Digital Assets and Data Management Practice Group unites key service offerings and technologies intersecting with the life cycle of data. The group is a globally recognized leader whose roster includes attorneys practicing in this space for more than two decades, former federal prosecutors, veteran in-house counsel and past government agency leaders. With more than 10 top-tier rankings by Chambers USA and Legal 500, the DADM Practice Group is considered a go-to firm for cybersecurity, privacy, advertising, data governance and emerging technologies.

Source: GlobalFinTechSeries