General Counsel Introduction: Eli

Community Introductions
1

Hello, everyone! I am Eli Cohen, new General Counsel for Centrifuge.

I am a US lawyer with a mixed transactional and regulatory legal expertise. I have worked in the US, Europe and Asia and across the TradFi and crypto spaces.

In private practice, I was with Baker & McKenzie in Moscow and Chicago offices working on project finance, securitizations and syndicated lending deals. I then moved in-house to Euroclear Bank in Brussels and Hong Kong working on a very large number and range of bond deals.

From Euroclear, I went to Singapore Exchange to head a new regulatory unit focusing on derivatives and commodities futures.

I then joined CME Group as their Asia regulatory counsel and was drawn into the crypto world with the launch of the CME BTC futures in 2017.

Most recently before joining Centrifuge, I have been with Block.One in Hong Kong working on the recently launched Gibraltar-regulated CEX Bullish.

This year at Centrifuge, my focus is on the formalization of the legal structures we use for our pool transactions.

Let me know if you have legal questions or topics that you would like to discuss.

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2

Thanks for the introduction and welcome to Centrifuge, Eli!

Let me ask you a question: what are the implications of the SEC regulation on projects dealing with NFTs and in particular Centrifuge?

https://nftspedia.com/sec-set-to-crackdown-on-crypto-regulations-what-does-it-mean-for-the-nft-markets-in-2022/

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It is a good question. There is actually not yet any crackdown on NFTs by the SEC (despite the press headlines). This is in an investigatory phase so we will need to assess where this goes if there are enforcement actions or regulations are proposed.

That said, I would not expect an NFT regulation to greatly affect the Centrifuge work. The pools under the Tinlake protocol are permissioned pools with the tokens issued as exempt securities under Reg D (currently) or Reg S.

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