S1 E16: Legal Issues in DAOs (Marta Belcher)

DAOn the Rabbit Hole

On this episode of DAOn the Rabbit Hole, we’re chatting with Marta Belcher. As a cryptocurrency and civil liberties attorney, Marta wears a lot of hats. She is General Counsel at Protocol Labs, Special Counsel at Electronic Frontier Foundation, and President of the Filecoin Foundation. She focuses a lot of her time on DAOs and policy issues around digital privacy and civil liberties

To kick off our talk, Marta tells us how she initially found crypto through her work with copyrights and patents back in 2015. Even before that, Marta actually crowd-sourced her graduation speech at Stanford. She’s always been interested in how we can make collective decision making stronger and more efficient. So naturally, she sees a lot of potential for web3 and DAOs.

That being said, Marta explains some of the potential legal liabilities that DAOs need to be aware of. She gives us some advice on how to more safely structure these new organizations, and talks about the pros and cons of incorporating as an LLC or similar business entity.

And while Marta certainly is a lawyer, she’s not your lawyer — so please do not take anything in this episode as legal advice. As always, DYOR.

To continue this conversation and stay up to date on all things DAOn the Rabbit Hole, you can follow Diana on Twitter @ddwchen and RabbitHole @rabbithole_gg. You can follow our guest, Marta Belcher, on Twitter @MartaBelcher.

⌛ TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 Intro

1:50 Marta’s Background

5:20 DAOs: technology doesn’t solve human issues

8:14 DAOs and legal liability

15:39 Wyoming crypto legislation

17:55 Does a DAO’s size affect its legal standing?

20:23 How DAO contributors can protect themselves

24:51 International issues within DAOs

26:40 Anonymity and privacy in crypto

34:51 Creating a legal system that encourages DAOs

38:47 This or That

40:06 Follow Marta!

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DISCLAIMER: The information in this video is the opinion of the speaker(s) only and is for informational purposes only. You should not construe it as investment advice, tax advice, or legal advice, and it does not represent any entity's opinion but those of the speaker(s). For investment or legal advice, please seek a duly licensed professional.