The Rapidly Evolving Crypto Asset Legal Landscape
American Bar Association, Business Law Section Spring Meeting 2025
Hosted by Financial Services Technology Subcommittee (Business Law Section)
Chanté Eliaszadeh — Panelist
Discussion
At the ABA Business Law Section's 2025 Spring Meeting in New Orleans, I joined co-panelists from Wachtell, BakerHostetler, Rutgers Law, and Cahill on the Financial Services Technology Subcommittee panel surveying the most consequential shifts in U.S. crypto regulation since the prior year — the GENIUS Act's federal stablecoin framework, the CLARITY Act's market-structure taxonomy, and the SEC's retreat from post-Howey token enforcement.
My focus was the practitioner-level question: what does the pivot from enforcement-driven regulation to statutory frameworks mean for deal work right now? I discussed how the new federal regime reshapes due diligence for tokenized securities, why Circle's June 2025 OCC trust-bank application (First National Digital Currency Bank) signals where custody infrastructure is going, and what the $10 billion federal-transition threshold in GENIUS actually means for state-registered issuers planning for scale. The panel also addressed the practical tension between the U.S.'s increasingly clear framework and international issuers who have spent three years building compliance around MiCA, Singapore's Payment Services Act, and Dubai's DIFC Digital Assets Law.
Panel Roster
- Moderator
- David M. Adlerstein — Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz
- Panelists
- Teresa Goody Guillén — BakerHostetler
- Prof. Yuliya Guseva — Rutgers Law School
- Sarah Chen — Cahill Gordon & Reindel
Topics Covered
- GENIUS Act
- CLARITY Act
- SEC crypto enforcement
- Digital asset taxonomy
- Stablecoin regulation
- Tokenized securities
- OCC trust bank chartering
- Cross-border crypto compliance
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Astraea Counsel represents blockchain, AI, and fintech founders on the regulatory and transactional questions discussed in this session.
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