Despite the past year’s market challenges, there was no shortage of enthusiasm among the more than 6,000 attendees at NFT.NYC2023 in April. The presentations from over 1,300 speakers offered many perspectives and predictions. In this article, we highlight five major themes we took away from the event for those who missed it.
1. Regulation: Navigating Current Events as Legal Issues Evolve
Not surprisingly, “regulation” was a major theme of the event, with a continued focus on how enforcement actions and court cases were shaping the regulatory landscape. Creators and counsel discussed legally defensible avenues to launch new projects and highlighted the open questions facing artists and brands today. Speakers addressed the implications of several recent court decisions, including the recent (separate) trademark infringement decisions in favor of Yuga Labs1 and Hermès.2 Also front-and-center for many participants was the legal theory alleged in an action against the creators of the NBA Top Shot collection3 that NFTs could constitute unregistered securities. In…