Thanks to my dear and patient friend and colleague Nizan Packin, I set out on a research and writing adventure a bit more than eighteen months ago. The result is a book chapter on NFTs for her forthcoming edited volume, The Cambridge Handbook for the Law and Policy of NFTs. The chapter is entitled "Non-investment Finance in an NFT World." At her suggestion, I recently posted the draft chapter to SSRN. You can find it here, and the abstract is set forth below.
Recent years have witnessed the rise of NFTs as vehicles for non-investment finance, including in nonprofit and political fundraising. As with other financial sectors in which NFTs have a role, the use of NFTs in financing nonprofits and political campaigns and committees has revealed gaps and ambiguities in existing legal regulatory systems. Appetite exists to evolve legal frameworks to complete and clarify applicable bodies of law and regulation.
This chapter undertakes to illuminate and reflect on the use of NFTs in financing nonprofits, political campaigns, and political committees. It begins by reviewing general aspects of the non-investment Internet finance environment and then describes and illustrates the use of NFTs in nonprofit and political fundraising. The chapter also offers guidance and reflections on core issues under applicable law and regulation and reflections on legal and regulatory questions and approaches relevant to non-investment finance using NFTs.
Those who know my work will recognize the roots of this chapter in the research I have conducted and published on crowdfunding. My writing on and work with nonprofits also makes a cameo appearance in the chapter. This one stretched my brain a bit (and that of my research assistant, too).