Blockchain Consortium Agentic Group Introduces New UK Office

Brian Klein, a partner at Baker Marquart LLP and chair of the coalition, sees government action as the main obstacle. "Law enforcement and regulatory actions relating to this technology have been steadily increasing over time and are all too often misdirected or premature," he said. "It is all too common for responsible entrepreneurs and companies to be subjected to unfair scrutiny by some federal or state agency, which, at a minimum, stifles them and broader innovation."

Jerry Brito, the Coin Center's executive director and a board member, noted that defense coalitions of this kind have played a role in "keeping the way free for innovators pushing the envelope to build out promising network technologies." "The early Internet could not have reached the kind of global scale we see today without the work of motivated entrepreneurs and tinkerers," he said.

The board includes Klein and Brito, Marjorie Peerce at Ballard Spahr, Grant Fondo at Goodwin Procter (leading the firm's Securities Litigation and White Collar Defense Group and Privacy & Cybersecurity Practice, and co-chairing the Blockchain Technology & Digital Currency Practice), Marcia Hofmann at Zeitgeist Law and special counsel to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Greg Egan at the Bitcoin Foundation as its corporate counsel. Supporting law firms include Sidley Austin, Hogan Lovells, and White and Case.

The DCLDC launched days after Coin Center formed the bipartisan Congressional Blockchain Caucus, an effort dedicated to "the advancement of sound public policy towards cryptocurrencies and other blockchain-based technologies."