What is a “Crypto Counsel”?

Short answer, a title I’ve given myself.

Because, I work with a lot of digital asset/Web3/DeFi clients and I want to work with more.

Long answer?

The role

First, what it’s not.

It’s not knowing everything there is about digital assets or being a programmer (I’ve not launched an NFT (although I’ve been tempted to)).

It’s not identifying everything that could go wrong and scaring a founder from bringing their idea to light.

A Crypto Counsel should have an interest in Crypto, and a desire to learn more, but it’s for founders to know their business.

A Crypto Counsel should be aware of the pitfalls and problems that arise, but be able to guide founders through them. The Crypto Counsel helps them operate in the wider legal world. Lending their experience to businesses to find and identify the unknowns and knowns and to help them navigate both.

This means working directly with founders and acting as an outside GC. It means working with inhouse legal teams to give a wider market view and specialist expertise from within their firm.

In both cases, this means a lot of calls to discuss issues - sharing experiences from other projects to assist on the next one. It means legal drafting, emails, regulatory submissions, and, sometimes, litigation but, more importantly, it means connections. Recognizing what you know, and what you don’t know, and using that to get clients to the right person who can provide solutions - within the firm but, more often, outside of it.

Some clients, a Crypto Counsel speaks to every week. Others, they speak to once a year. The key is being there when needed - through the good, the bad, and the ugly - finding the way to leap legal hurdles.

So, if that’s the role, how do I fulfill it?

My credentials

I started at a regional firm, which meant getting my hands dirty. Both in working closely with clients, on all matters (not just M&A), and doing marketing and business development from day one. BD mainly focused on startups and scale ups.

I set up and ran drop-in clinics for founders with various universities and city councils - helping founders identify priority issues and avoid unnecessary legals.

I moved to a transatlantic firm, where a lot of the client’s issues were the same but the numbers were bigger. I gained a better understanding of the other side of the deal, acting for the acquirers rather than the sellers.

And I went inhouse. Working side by side with the inhouse team of a household name (LV=), on their proposed sale. I saw what mattered on the ground and what’s really needed from external counsel.

Now offshore, crypto clients are my founders. I’ve worked on SAFTS and token warrants. On ICOs and IPOs. Setting up vaults, launching blockchains. DeFi, Web3 games, NFTs, and all kinds of layer 2s. I’ve worked with the biggest names there are and many you have never heard of. I’ve worked with founders in every continent (except Antarctica) and, it seems, every sector (music, art, rare minerals, finance, gaming, the list goes on).

All this is to say that Crypto Counsel is a title I have given myself, because it best explains the role I perform. 

If that’s something you need. Give me a call (or, more realistically, drop me a Telegram (@jakitch)).

(Written by me. Enhanced by AI).