10 Questions. Virtual Reality

• Author: Jenny B. Davis
• Pages: 29-30

10 QUESTIONS

Virtual Reality

From development to investment, this cryptocurrency lawyer is all in

BY JENNY B. DAVIS

The metaverse may be a virtual

realm, but lawyer Amy Mad-

ison Luo is doing very real

work there—and achieving

very real success.

As a new partner at DIGITAL , a bil-

lionaire-backed venture  rm , she invests

in metaverse -focused blockchain compa-

nies, from applications to infrastructure.

But she’s been working full time in this

space since 2018, when she left BigLaw

to follow her passion for a new kind

of currency.

Luo’s career in crypto has been as

exciting as the market itself. Among

her many accomplishments: She helped

develop and bring to market USD Coin,

a leading branded stablecoin; she’s

worked for the cryptocurrency exchange

Coinbase; and she’s provided strategic

and legal advice to leading nonfungible

token companies, corporate presidents

and even numerous celebrities.

Those celebrity connections came

courtesy of the many contacts she made

earlier in her career, when she worked

for Paramount Pictures, Major League

Baseball, Harmonix Music Systems

and others.

Today the worlds of sports and

entertainment are converging with cryp-

tocurrency in innovative new ways via

megadollar deals—meaning Luo, who

splits her time between Los Angeles and

New York City, is perfectly positioned

to make a real impact in this brave new

virtual world.

The metaverse is such a hot topic

these days—everyone’s jumping

in, from business-world people

like lawyers and investors to

sports fans and gamers. Are you

able to tell who’s serious about it

and who’s just there for the f‌l ex?

You can de nitely tell the difference

between people that have put in time to

understand Web3 [a new decentralized

version of the internet] and the commu-

nity, and the people that didn’t. Too of-

ten, you have a big brand come into the

space and try to slap “NFT” on their

product, and it’s very transparent. It

doesn’t work. It’s so obvious to people

in this space when you’re powerful in

the traditional space and you just want

the hype.

I want to take you back to

2018. At the time, you were an

associate in the Boston of‌f‌i ce of

Ropes & Gray working in private

equity. How did you get involved

in cryptocurrency?

I actually discovered crypto in 2017. I

learned about Ethereum  rst and then

backed into Bitcoin. As a lawyer, I saw

the transformative potential of smart

contracts right away, across almost ev-

ery industry we know of. To learn more,

I started attending crypto conferences

around the world. I remember I went

to Mexico for an Ethereum develop-

ers conference. There were very, very

few lawyers—if any—going to these

conferences back then. It was like me

and the Coin Center guys. Once people

found out that I was a lawyer that also

understood crypto, I’d walk out with

a dozen job offers, so I decided to take

one of them, and that’s how I ended up

in the Caymans.

What kind of work did you do

there?

At the time, due to the regulatory

uncertainty in the U.S., which still exists

today, it was popular to set up token

issuers offshore, particularly in the

Cayman Islands—it’s a great neutral ju-

risdiction—so I went to the Caymans to

work on structuring token projects. Ba-

sically, I was structuring the deals. What

should the entity structure look like?

Tankleff wondered whether he

blacked out or broke down somehow.

He confessed and was convicted solely

on his statement, which he never signed.

He eventually was exonerated in 2008

and later became a lawyer.

Kassin notes a key factor that led to

Tankleff’s confession: the 1969 Supreme

Court decision in Frazier v. Cupp,

which made it lawful for police to lie

about evidence while interrogating

suspects. Kassin points out that such

leeway makes young suspects especially

vulnerable. “There isn’t a psychologist

on the planet who doesn’t understand

the risk of doing that and wouldn’t see

the risk to an innocent person,” he says.

In interviews with exonerees, Kassin

learned that many confessed because

they assumed evidence eventually would

show they didn’t do it. “They become

complacent and believe innocence will

set them free,” he says. “They say, ‘Well,

I didn’t need a lawyer, I didn’t do any-

thing wrong.’”

Suspects who confess and later re-

cant have had an uphill battle, although

the advent of DNA technology and

advanced forensics has opened doors to

help prove their cases. “When the Inno-

cence Project was founded in 1992 , that

was a game changer . That just altered

everything,” Kassin says.

Founders Peter Neufeld and Barry

Scheck, along with a dedicated group

of lawyers, sparked a movement that

has since uncovered more than 100

wrongful convictions based on false

confessions and inspired the creation of

innocence projects at colleges and law

schools across the country.

Kassin is encouraged by reforms

among some states that require the re-

cording of interrogations and ban lying

about evidence to juvenile suspects . But

it’s not enough. He says loopholes allow

police to turn off cameras, claim equip-

ment malfunctions or say no cameras

were available.

Kassin sees this scenario ensu-

ing: “And then off-camera, someone

confesses,” he says. “There should be a

no-excuse policy. If the whole thing is

not on camera, the confession should

not be admissible.” Q

ABA JOURNAL | APRIL—MAY 2022

29

Inter Alia | 10 QUESTIONS