Miami Law’s Technology Law Club hosted a discussion regarding the thought process behind cryptocurrency implementations relating to both corporations and municipalities and the legal arenas birthed by industrywide integrations of crypto. Second-year student Diana Milton and third-year Alfredo Dally hosted the event. Allan Lemos, a first-year law student and member of the Tech Law Club, moderated the conversation and Q&A.
Guest speakers Justin Wales, J.D. '12, head of legal for North America and vice president of Crypto.com, and Mike Sarasti, chief innovation officer and director of Innovation and Technology at City of Miami, discussed their professional interactions with the crypto space.
Wales leads the company's North American legal and regulatory strategy and operations after founding, building, and developing highly esteemed practice areas focusing on blockchain and digital currency at Carlton Fields and K&L Gates. Wales started his legal career focusing on the First Amendment, and over years of meetings with experts discussing payments, and securities, he found himself an expert ready to color in the gray area of the law digital assets and blockchain created.
Sarasti has always been instrumental in the advancement of civic services, user-driven technology, and open data. At the City of Miami, he has led efforts to transform digital services, streamline IT operations, build process improvement capacity, and conceptualize smart city solutions throughout the City. Sarasti offered a policy perspective shaped by his career working in local government, naming one of the advantages of a municipality-derived currency, like MiamiCoin, to be how it creates a space for civic engagement.
The event served to enlighten and motivate students to pursue law in the gray. From a government perspective, Sarasti recounted a shift in his perspective — from looking for a problem to solve while rejecting technology, to allowing the paradigm of what’s capable with technology to morph and reflect the current state of innovation. And looking at the ever-evolving technology/crypto landscape, Wales proposed the question of whether we should respond to technology by creating new laws. As it stands today, lot of the law that is being applied was created before digital assets were available, and maybe that covers the bases for now.
“In law school, you get presented with cases that are already decided, theories already established,” Wales said. “You look at the law as something that happened in the past and needs to be applied. Then, you get tested on spotting issues. But really early on in representing cryptocurrency companies, I learned that you have to get comfortable with the fact that you’re operating on the vanguard of new technologies. Sometimes, there’s full-stop no answer. With that, you have a range of possibilities as to how you want to proceed, but the most trustworthy option is to just move forward in the most responsible way possible.”
The Technology Law Club is Miami Law’s newest legal practice area student organization and builds on the momentum of Miami's growing startup ecosystem. As Miami grows into a more vibrant and influential scale-up community, the founders, investors, and operators should be able to look to Miami Law for guidance, assistance, and counsel. The purpose of the Technology Law Club is to increase awareness of the legal issues technology companies are facing and the technical issues that are impacting our communities and to leverage this awareness to forge careers in technology law for Miami Law students.
