In our Expert Takes, the opinion leaders of the 39 Inside and outside express their opinions, share their board experience. Expert Takes covers everything from Blockchain technology and ICO financing to taxation, regulation and the adoption of cryptocurrency by different sectors of the economy.

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Imagine that your ICO raised $ 50 million and your cryptocurrency is trading at 100x from where you launched. Everyone loves your project, your friends and family are impressed, and you are the darling of Blockchain. Congratulations and welcome to the major leagues! You now have an important business to protect, requiring stakeholders to meet, and a hard-to-deliver product roadmap. Besides talented engineers and marketers, you need an in-house lawyer on your team. Here are some reasons why.

Corporate Governance: There is no draft law on corporations. Do not accidentally open unlimited personal liability by failing to create an appropriate entity. Whether you are a non-profit foundation or a for-profit corporation, you will need to adhere to the appropriate business formalities. This means having your documents in order, filing with the appropriate federal and state governments, holding appropriate meetings and maintaining good business practices. The observation of business formalities is not something that has been done once and forgotten. It's an endless process that takes time and attention.

Nonprofit organizations are highly regulated entities: you can not simply snap your fingers and become a non-profit organization. Assuming you have consulted legal experts and properly classified your paperwork, there are still many hurdles that you will have to meet to achieve and maintain the tax free status. For starters, a non-profit organization must pursue charitable goals, such as alleviating poverty, educating people, advancing religion, or another goal that benefits society. Can a Blockchain project meet these requirements? Sure. But having founders leave with exceptional earnings after an ICO will not help your cause. Be very careful here, as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) looks at it.

Open Source: All of your copyright are open source, so you do not need an author rights lawyer, no? False. Open source issues are highly technical and can have a huge impact on your project. Every detail counts when it's about open source, including the license you're using, its compatibility with other licenses, how you manage the works you create and how you choose from. 39, other open source works to borrow. A little upstream legal work on these issues can help you avoid a contentious open source conflict dispute on the road.

Trademarks: Your project has been launched and your 10,000 token holders have voted for a name that they like. Have you consulted with a trademark attorney to make sure the name was not already in use? Have you registered your trademark with the appropriate regulatory bodies? A surprisingly large number of large market capitalization cryptocurrencies have not bothered to register a brand, and several operate under a brand name that is similar to that of other pre-existing brands. Use due diligence before it is too late and you end up receiving a trademark infringement complaint.

Employees / Consultants: As an official entity, you must have in place the appropriate documents with your employees and consultants to ensure regulatory compliance and that the intellectual property created by their efforts are properly owned and licensed. While many of the documents used are "standard", the devil is in the details, and these details become more complicated when you work with developers spread around the world. Do not be lazy here. Failure to sign the proper documentation can have a significant impact on your intellectual property.

Regulatory Compliance: The US government is very active. Anarcho-capitalist rhetoric can be tantalizing until you receive your first assignment from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or the IRS and you have to hire a law firm in New York City at $ 1000 / hour to defend yourself against these agencies. You have a fiduciary duty to your stakeholders to be in compliance with applicable laws and in a new space like Blockchain this can be very difficult since no one knows for sure which laws apply or how they are. 39; apply. There are laws on banks and money transfers, securities laws and communications, and even traditional issues like confidentiality of data. Do not think that regulations are just something to worry about venture-backed software companies. Taxes: I could have included taxes in the above section with securities, banking, money transfer and other regulatory concerns, but taxes deserve a special appeal. .. because nothing annoys the US government as a group of smart entrepreneurs who beat the system. If you want to know what is waiting for cryptocurrency creators who do not abide by the rules of the IRS, read what happened to online gaming companies and Swiss banks. Long story short, they were crushed like insects. Do not be a bug, and comply with tax regulations.

Contracts: Do you want your cryptocurrency to be listed on a new market? Buy D & O insurance? Enter into a development agreement with a consulting company in India? Or maybe just rent an office space in Zug? All of these transactions will involve legal contracts to be reviewed, revised and negotiated. Managing the daily legal needs of a company worth $ 100 million is a full-time job for a professional. Do not try to handle all these questions yourself.