Law of Code

What do the 2026 midterm results mean for tech policy in the U.S.?

Not necessarily a tech crackdown, according to Justin Slaughter, senior advisor at Paradigm. Justin explains why a wave this big scrambles the usual playbook, and what tech’s pitch to Democrats should be.

This podcast also features Khurram Dara, Partner at Thompson Street, and Mike Katz, Partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips.

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

1:25 AI data centers and the exit polls

2:18 Tech’s unhedged political bet

3:28 Why a tech crackdown isn’t a given

5:01 A generational turnover

6:04 Realignment

9:00 How tech should approach Democrats now

10:25 Why startups have the advantage

13:52 Should crypto batten down the hatches?

16:32 Will Democrats listen?

19:30 What happens at the SEC and CFTC

22:42 Lessons from swaps and Dodd-Frank

25:02 What derailed CLARITY

27:53 Bubbles

29:00 Inside the Biden admin on crypto

32:29 The lesson of the long 2016

34:19 The state attorneys general shift

Thank you to the sponsors of this episode: the Decentralization Research Center, the Solana Policy Institute, the Hyperliquid Policy Center and the law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel.

To learn more about CahillNXT, visit https://www.cahill.com/practices/litigation-digital-assets-ai-frontier-technology.

Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice. Views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of their employers. Listening to this podcast does not create an attorney-client relationship.

David Lat has watched the legal profession for 30 years: as a law student, a federal clerk and a prosecutor, then as the founder of Above the Law and now as the writer behind Original Jurisdiction, one of the most widely read newsletters on law and the legal profession.

In this conversation, he explains how the profession has changed since he began covering it in the early 2000s.

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

2:07 30 years of change in the legal profession

4:19 Private equity’s backdoor into law firms

6:35 How David uses AI

9:52 Is the fear of AI overblown?

11:29 Ranking the circuit courts

15:25 Interviewing with Justice Scalia

18:39 Crypto as a law school hypothetical

21:29 Regulation by enforcement and due process

21:59 Speech and debate

25:09 The most underrated legal skill

Thank you to the sponsors of this episode: Cahill Gordon & Reindel, the Hyperliquid Policy Center, the Solana Policy Institute and the Decentralization Research Center.

To get in touch with the Cahill team about how any issues discussed in this episode apply to your situation, email [email protected].

Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice. Views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of their employers. Listening to this podcast does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Can traditional financial institutions use permissionless blockchains without being offside of the Bank Secrecy Act?

What happens if a bank unknowingly pays a fee to a sanctioned validator?

By the end of this episode, you'll understand the history of the Bank Secrecy Act, how OFAC actually enforces sanctions and a new paper's nine-part framework for how banks can use public blockchains and stay compliant.

You'll hear from the paper's three co-authors:

• Rebecca Rettig (Chief Operating Officer and Chief Legal Officer of Jito Labs, of counsel at Arktouros)
• Omid Malekan (adjunct professor at Columbia Business School) and
• Michael Mosier (co-founder of Arktouros and former acting director of FinCEN).

This episode is presented by Altitude, visit https://altitude.xyz/law to learn more about their global payments platform.

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

3:24 Problems they see

5:39 The router principle

7:13 What permissionless systems get right

11:28 Lessons from the open internet

14:23 Credible neutrality

19:20 A brief history of the BSA

23:55 What OFAC enforcement looks for

26:16 Treasury, Iran and open networks

28:29 The SEC's innovation exemption

34:03 Compliance belongs at the app layer

37:04 "The government will never allow it"

39:39 The paper's nine-part framework

44:12 Network layer vs. transaction layer

46:28 The $50,000 canoe

48:02 Safety, soundness and final settlement

50:29 Why this matters for national security

51:27 Privacy

58:07 What this means for DeFi

Thank you to Cahill Gordon & Reindel for sponsoring this podcast.

Thank you as well to the Solana Policy Institute, the Hyperliquid Policy Center and the Decentralization Research Center for supporting the podcast.

The full paper is here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7343938.

Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice. Views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of their employers. Listening to this podcast does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Anthropic calls some AI distillation illicit. But is distillation illegal?

The answer may depend less on what you do with AI outputs than on how you accessed them.

This episode is a deep dive into how courts might rule. We cover X v. Bright Data, what OpenAI's and Anthropic's terms say about who owns AI outputs, why Anthropic's own fair use arguments could be turned against it and what the labs will likely do next.

Thank you to the presenting sponsor of this episode, Altitude. Visit altitude.xyz/law to learn more about their payments platform.

You'll hear from the three Variant co-authors of one of the sharpest papers on the topic:

• Daniel Barabander, investment partner and chief legal officer at Variant
• Sabina Beleuz, deputy general counsel at Variant
• Elijah Fox, investor at Variant

Read their article here: https://variant.fund/articles/license-distill-law-distillation-anthropic/.

Timestamps:

0:00 What is distillation?

1:52 Intro

3:01 Why distillation matters

5:44 X v. Bright Data

7:50 Access vs. selling

10:40 Copyright preemption

11:25 Why X doesn't own your posts

13:49 From scraping to distillation

16:12 Who owns AI outputs?

19:38 Is all distillation illicit?

24:10 Anthropic's fair use problem

25:05 Bartz v. Anthropic

26:42 Predictions

28:41 Distilling the distillers

29:21 Selling services, not tokens

32:34 Antitrust

37:06 Tech moves exponentially, law sublinearly

40:47 Humans, AI and personhood

45:15 Final thoughts

Thank you as well to the other sponsors of this episode: Cahill Gordon & Reindel, the Solana Policy Institute, the Hyperliquid Policy Center and the Decentralization Research Center.

To get in touch with the Cahill team about how any issues discussed in this episode apply to your situation, email [email protected].

Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice. Views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of their employers. Listening to this podcast does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Cybercrime costs Americans an estimated $200 billion a year, and AI is supercharging it. The U.S. government's newest response is one of the oldest tools in the Constitution, one Congress hasn't used since the War of 1812.

This episode covers letters of marque and privateers: their role in the American Revolution, how prize courts and bonds kept privateers from becoming pirates, and the White House memo that trends toward implementing a modern version for cyberspace.

Sponsors:

This episode is presented by Altitude, visit altitude.xyz/law to learn more about their global payments platform.

Sponsors also include: The law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel. Cahill is hosting Confluence 2026, its flagship emerging tech conference, in New York City on September 24, 2026. You can apply to attend here: https://www.cahill.com/confluence2026.

Thank you as well to the Solana Policy Institute and the Hyperliquid Policy Center for supporting the podcast.

Guests:

• Chris Perkins (President of Franklin Crypto at Franklin Templeton, Naval Academy graduate and Marine Corps veteran)
• Ari Redbord (Global Head of Policy at TRM Labs and former federal prosecutor)
• Michael Coates (CISO of the Solana Foundation and previously Twitter's first CISO)
• Camelia Lopez Shoemaker (Holland & Knight, former DOJ)
• Nelson Rosario (Rosario Tech Law)

Timestamps:

(0:00) The $200 billion problem

(2:16) The Model T and the FBI

(4:18) Pig butchering

(7:03) History

(7:50) The high seas and the internet

(8:30) Marque vs. reprisal

(11:35) American Revolution

(14:08) Building a (private) navy

(17:25) The Constitution

(18:40) The Paris Declaration

(20:34) Pirates or privateers?

(22:12) The five-part system

(22:40) Why government can't scale

(23:30) The Fourth Amendment

(25:26) Suspicious Activity Reports

(28:23) Recent memorandum

(30:40) The bond

(32:34) The blockchain

(33:49) Latest from U.S. gov't

(34:56) The attribution problem

(36:30) Who's involved today?

(37:49) The Beacon Network

(39:16) Pre-clearance and due process

(41:10) Reporting cybercrime

(44:26) International law

This should be the internet's best explainer on letters of marque. You don't need to be a lawyer, historian or security expert to follow along.

Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice. Views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of their employers. Listening to this podcast does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Vaults might be finance's next trillion-dollar opportunity. But what are they? How do they work? What regulation might apply?

You'll hear from the creator of crypto vaults, Andre Cronje (Flying Tulip, Yearn), alongside builders Adrian Cachinero Vasiljevic (Steakhouse Financial) and Charles St. Louis (Ethereum Foundation).

You'll also hear from SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce and top lawyers Lewis Cohen (Cahill), Tuongvy Le (Veda Labs), Rodrigo Seira (Cooley) and Linda Jeng (Aave).

Thank you to the presenting sponsor of this episode, Altitude (altitude.xyz/law), a payments platform for the next generation.

This should be the internet's best podcast on vaults. You don't need to be a lawyer, developer or finance expert to follow along.

Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(4:27) What is a vault?

(9:34) History of onchain vaults

(11:55) The first vault, with Andre Cronje

(21:05) The SEC's early interest

(22:30) Investment contracts and Howey

(31:28) Notes and Reves

(37:10) The strategist

(48:54) The curator

(58:30) Investment company?

(1:12:40) Investment adviser?

(1:20:00) Separately managed accounts

(1:30:30) Custody rules

(1:55:43) What's next

Thank you as well to the law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel for sponsoring this podcast. If you'd like to join Cahill's flagship emerging tech conference, Confluence, you can apply here: https://www.cahill.com/confluence2026.

Thank you as well to the Solana Policy Institute and the Hyperliquid Policy Center for supporting the podcast.

Nothing in this podcast is legal or investment advice.

Commissioner Hester Peirce joins the podcast to discuss Regulation Crypto Assets, as well as secondary market trading, DePIN and vaults.

If you haven't listened to the full Reg Crypto explainer, that's episode 208.

This episode is presented by Altitude. Visit altitude.xyz/law to learn more about their financial operating system.

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

2:22 Secondary transactions

3:23 Promises and representations

5:05 Essential managerial efforts

8:27 Regulatory arbitrage

10:29 Form TR

16:59 Existing token projects and Form TR

18:27 Compliance costs

21:48 Secondary markets

24:12 DePIN

27:02 Vaults

35:31 Accredited investors

40:25 Tokens and equity

Thank you to the other sponsors of this episode: Cahill Gordon & Reindel, the Solana Policy Institute and the Hyperliquid Policy Center.

On Thursday, September 24, 2026, CahillNXT will host Confluence 2026, its flagship conference, in New York City.

This year's theme, Leading the NXT Frontier, brings together regulators, institutional investors, founders, policymakers and industry leaders to examine digital assets, market structure, regulation and the emerging technologies transforming financial markets.

To register your interest, email [email protected].

Newsletter: Stay updated on emerging tech law for free at lawofcode.fm.

Any feedback on this episode? Or how to improve the podcast? Click here: https://forms.gle/yFFN66e8iy8shQkAA

Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice. Commissioner Peirce's views are her own and do not necessarily represent those of the SEC or her fellow Commissioners. Listening to this podcast does not create an attorney-client relationship.

The GRANITE Act is a two-and-a-half-page bill designed to stop foreign governments from censoring Americans online.

Preston Byrne, the Managing Partner at Byrne & Storm, has spent over a decade advising tech companies on free speech questions. His work was instrumental in the introduction of the GRANITE Act in the U.S. House of Representatives on August 27, 2026.

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

2:10 How foreign governments censor Americans

3:34 The origins of sovereign immunity

6:40 197 demands, 4 refusals

8:58 Sovereign immunity in the courts

10:58 The GRANITE Act shield

12:37 The GRANITE Act sword

17:20 Where GRANITE stands in the states, House and Senate

This episode is presented by Altitude. Visit altitude.xyz/law to understand why.

Thank you to the other sponsors of this episode: Cahill Gordon & Reindel, the Solana Policy Institute and the Hyperliquid Policy Center.

Preston's Blog Post: https://prestonbyrne.com/2026/08/28/rulligranite/

GRANITE Act: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/10174/text?s=1&r=1&hl=granite

Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice. Views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of their employers. Listening to this podcast does not create an attorney-client relationship.

What is Regulation Crypto Assets? An SEC-led rule proposal that allows projects to raise capital in the U.S. by selling tokens. That's the short answer.

The long answer is this podcast. By the end of this episode, you'll understand why these rules were needed, what they say and what could still be tweaked before they become law.

This episode is presented by Altitude, visit ⁠altitude.xyz/law⁠ to learn more about their financial operating system.

You'll hear from leading lawyers, almost all of whom are cited in the footnotes of the SEC's own proposal:

• Lewis Cohen, partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel
• Sarah Brennan, general counsel at Delphi Digital
• Gabe Shapiro, co-founder and CEO of MetaLeX
• Rodrigo Seira, partner at Cooley
• Miles Jennings, general counsel at a16z crypto
• Andrew Hinkes, partner at Winston Taylor

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

4:17 How we got here

6:53 Solving two problems

10:21 Reg A, Reg CF and Reg D

12:10 Five subparts of Reg Crypto

14:12 Who will use these?

18:08 The Startup Exemption

19:35 Rule 103 disclosures

21:03 LBRY and silence

30:14 Secondary markets and Telegram

34:13 The Fundraising Exemption

42:21 Why Reg A and Reg CF failed

48:14 Rule 400: Exit

50:23 Third-party problems

57:34 Under-promising

1:02:08 Essential managerial efforts

1:12:09 The state of crypto

1:15:13 State law questions

1:20:37 What's next?

Thank you to the sponsors of this episode: Cahill Gordon & Reindel, the Solana Policy Institute and the Hyperliquid Policy Center.

To get in touch with the Cahill team about how any issues discussed in this episode apply to your situation, email [email protected].

Newsletter: Stay updated on emerging tech law for free at lawofcode.fm.

Any feedback on this episode? Or how to improve the podcast? Click here: https://forms.gle/yFFN66e8iy8shQkAA.

Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice. Views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of their employers. Listening to this podcast does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Grant Vingoe is the CEO of the Ontario Securities Commission, Canada's largest securities regulator.

Grant explains Canada's approach to crypto and why he sees a careful, incremental approach as a strength.

Law of Code is presented by Altitude, visit https://altitude.xyz/law to learn why.

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

0:55 From 30 years in New York to running the OSC

5:49 How the CSA and Canada's provincial regulators fit together

9:01 The crypto contract

12:34 Grant's first exposure to crypto

16:09 The gamification of financial markets and prediction markets

21:22 Making crypto safer for Canadians, from ETFs onward

26:30 Stablecoins

29:52 The Stablecoin Act and federal regulators

35:02 The $30,000 purchase limit

38:18 How industry can better engage regulators

45:02 Canada's brain drain question

50:34 Modernizing the regulation of public companies

54:17 Permissionless finance

1:01:13 Accredited investor rules

Thank you to our other sponsors:

McCarthy Tétrault LLP, with which I am co-hosting a Crypto in Canada event on August 12, 2026 in Toronto: https://luma.com/89qnrnah

Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP: https://www.osler.com/en/expertise/services/digital-assets-and-blockchain/

Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP: https://www.cahill.com/practices/litigation-digital-assets-and-emerging-technology

Solana Policy Institute: https://www.solanapolicyinstitute.org/

Hyperliquid Policy Center: https://hyperliquidpolicy.org/

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