British auction house Christie’s is where spectacular auctions take place. Transactions that are carried out there are mentioned all over the world. Many Christie’s auctions attract interest due to the fact that they may be controversial, such as sale of an image created by artificial intelligence or the work entitled “Femme assise près d’une fenêtre (Marie-Thérèse)” by Pablo Picasso. Recently Christie’s announced that another innovative auction is planned.

Namely its October “Post-War to Present” auction will include the sale of 31 non-fungible tokens that are considered to be some of the oldest on the Ethereum blockchain. A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unit of data stored on a digital ledger, called a blockchain, that certifies a digital asset to be unique and therefore not interchangeable. This will be the first ever live auction with bidding conducted entirely in Ether. The NFTs that Christie’s is offering in the fall have distinct legacies of their own. They are also estimated to sell for between 250 and 350 ETH, which shakes out to approximately between $870,000 and $1.3 million. These NFTs are Curio Cards that were made in May 2017, so even earlier than CryptoPunks and CryptoKitties.  

Aside from the Curio Cards NFTs, Christie’s will be auctioning NFTs from the Art Blocks curated collection. Modern artists would have possibility to choose their favourite post-war artworks and pay for them in Ethereum. The tokens are representing real-world objects like art, music, in-game items, videos and other seemingly mundane everyday signifiers. Works by renowned artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Elaine de Kooning, Joan Mitchell and Grace Hartigan will be part of the auction alongside works by Wayne Thiebaud.

The event definitely created a buzz among art enthusiasts.  NFTs are highly valued digital assets which uses blockchain to record the ownership status of the aforementioned items. After the transaction only the buyer of an NFT has the official of being its owner. However anyone can still view the item.

Recently, several large cryptocurrency-based auctions have brought in huge amounts of money in the art world. The upcoming “Post-War to Present” auction is sure to create a buzz among currency enthusiasts. One thing we can be sure of – a digital revolution is coming, and the world of cryptocurrencies will surprise us more than once.

Sources:

Christie’s Is Now Accepting Ether for Ethereum’s Earliest NFTs | Observer

Christie’s to Hold Auction of Some of the Oldest NFT Art — With Live Bids in ETH | Technology News (ndtv.com)

Christie’s na Twitterze: „Friday, 1 October at 9:30AM EDT, Christie’s New York presents Post-War to Present: The NFTs. This will be the first ever live auction with bidding conducted entirely in Ether. Featuring Curio Cards and Art Blocks Curated. https://t.co/Ydpr1zsr5Z https://t.co/zUaoY0pEXT” / Twitter

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The Wall Street Journal recently described quirks in the U.S. Tax Treaty with Malta that became a popular topic in the legal advice sector.[1] In the said article, WSJ describes an offshore tax shelter (a tax regulation in Malta) which promises rich Americans they can avoid lots of capital-gains taxes by setting up pensions in Malta. This issue is not only American struggle with tax abuse. For instance, Poland has also signed an international tax treaty with Malta (Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Poland and the Government of Malta for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income signed in La Valetta on 7 January 1994)[2] and in 2020 the Treaty was amended due to the necessity of closing loopholes in the international (bilateral) tax system[3]. Moreover as a restoration of the Polish industry after COVID-19 pandemic, the Polish Government and the Ministry of Finance prepared the new Tax Act which shall prevent the change of the entity’s tax residence to the offshore tax shelter [4].

Before we move to the tax abuse based on the U.S. bilateral tax treaty with Malta it is advisable to start with Treaty’s provisions treatment.

U.S. – MALTA TAX TREATY

The Treaty was done in 8 August 2008 and came into force in late 2010. As Jeffrey L. Rubinger wrote The Treaty contains very favorable provisions that can result in significant tax benefits to U.S. members of a Maltese pension. In order for such U.S. members to take advantage of these benefits, the pension must qualify as a resident of Malta under the Treaty and also satisfy the limitation on benefits (LOB) article of the Treaty. [5] In his article Rubinger enumerates the Treaty’s provisions that could become a victim of the interpretation tax abuse.

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Identification of the hacking problem

Based on the US Cybersecurity Trends Report (link to an online source at the end of the article), the hacking phenomenon records an increase in cyber-attacks in 2019 and 2020. From the legal perspective, what is particularly interesting is a significant increase in the recorded data loss events as a result of hacking activities in relation to the number of cases in individual years in the 2015-2020 prediction. One of the studies in the indicated report shows two specific moments over the years. The first one took place in 2016-2017, where we see an increase in hacker attacks by nearly 2,000 violations, but this is not related to a proportional increase in lost data, which differs from those from 2016 by about 1.5 million. In 2017, there was a slight increase in infringements, but more importantly, less data was lost. The second of these important moments indicated by the experts took place in 2018-2019, when there was a drastic increase in lost data with a slight increase in violations compared to 2018. We are seeing a drastic decrease in the number of breaches with a simultaneous huge increase in lost data.

From the analysis of the report, a surprising conclusion can be drawn that currently data breaches by hackers are less and less frequent compared to previous years, but much more effective.

The report also shows annual global cybersecurity transactions and equity financing in 2016-2021. In this respect there can be observed the huge projected increase in cash outlays for the cybersecurity target compared to 2020. The projected increase is over $ 10 billion. Despite the increase in spending, there has been a decline in the number of cybersecurity contracts.

The report presents the share of global cybersecurity transactions in 2020 by country. The first thing that throws up is that the US has over a half of shares in global market and is thus becoming a sort of hegemon in the fight against hackers. China ranks second with 12%. On the other hand, Israel ranks third with a 10% share, also showing a 4% increase compared to 2019. With the same trend, it has a good chance of overtaking China in this respect. The report shows the number of annual departures from the cybersecurity sector through mergers and acquisitions and stock market debuts. In the years 2016-2019, an upward trend can be noticed. From year to year, the number of departures increased by 100.

The report also shows the ratio of the increase in the number of the so-called megarounds (contracts worth over $100 million), which results in an increase in the volume of transactions.

All these increases in value did not go unnoticed. The consequence of the development of this type of industry, which is cybersecurity, is the creation and development of private companies. There are already over 30 companies in the world involved in the development of cybersecurity technologies, the value of which exceeds $ 1 billion. In Europe, for example, Acronis is such a company.

Almost 75% of cyber defenders are based in the United States, most of them in California. Second place, with almost 20% concentration of cyber defenders, is Israel. Canada and Ireland boast one “cyber defender” within their borders. In Canada it is the company “Isara”, and in Ireland “Tines”.

Methods of counteracting cyber attacks

There can be differentiated various methods of counteracting cyber-attacks. Most innovative ones are presented below:

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On 15 September 2021 partners of KIEŁTYKA GŁADKOWSKI KG LEGAL LAW FIRM will take part in the summit devoted to the future of EU’s currency, organized and hosted by Bitkom, which is a German digital association, founded 1999 in Berlin, representing more than 2,000 companies of the digital economy. Their membership spans more than 1,000 SMEs, over 500 startups and virtually all global players.

https://www.bitkom.org/EN/About-us/About-us.html

The Euro Summit organizers will discuss the questions of the future of the present monetary system and economy; the key drivers of the digital euro; the co-existence or competition between a central bank digital currency and private payments or crypto-assets.

KIELTYKA GLADKOWSKI will take part in panel discussions in the following areas:

Digital euro: A Threat or Opportunity for Banks?

• What do we need the digital euro for?
• Design choices and their trade-offs
• From cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and Diem to CBDCs
• CBDCs and stablecoins – the race for mainstream adoption
• How crypto is revolutionizing our financial system
• How decentralized and disintermediated will the future of finance look like?

The speakers will include:

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On 29 July 2021 KIEŁTYKA GŁADKOWSKI KG LEGAL took part in the webinar ‘Cell and gene data innovation and multi-stakeholder data transfer’ (Plan, capture and set the infrastructure for data sharing across the value chain, to optimize commercial strategy), organized by Reuters Events in participation and partnership with Salesforce. The scope of the webinar is within life science and digital health specialization that constitutes one of the core specializations of our law firm.

Some of the panelists included:

Augusto Penjasoff – Business Partner, Global Cell Therapy IT Head in BMS (Bristol Myers Squibb),

Curt Fitzgerald – Director- Service Delivery- C&GT in Novartis,

Gary Gabriel – Global Advisor for Healthcare and Life Sciences in Tableau,

Neary Detrick – Senior Director, Data Management & Analytics in Bluebird Bio,

and Beth Hayes as a moderator- healthcare and lifesciences business consulting – Pharma Lead, Industry Transformation (Salesforce).

The mission of Salesforce company (a partner and a participant of the webinar) is to empower companies to connect with the customers, providers of services and patients in the new and reimagined way. Salesforce serves leading organizations across the industry, including pioneers in CGT (cell and gene therapy).

Important question posed during the webinar concerned personalized medicine.

The response is that the latter is the future of the medicine (so-called a Medicine 2.0). A deliberation about personalized medicine is not a discussion about future in about 10 or 15 years. It drives a magnificent impact across the industry. There was also discussed the question of the difference between the traditional medicine and personalized medicine.

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