Virtual Assets Chamber
●4-week programme·8h total·5 modules

Stablecoins for Legal Professionals

Delivered live online across four consecutive weeks, with weekly two-hour practitioner-led sessions combining doctrinal analysis, comparative-jurisdiction case studies, drafting exercises and structured opinion-writing workshops. Cohort sizes are limited to preserve advisory-grade discussion. Participants receive curated reading drawn from primary sources, leading decisions, regulatory texts and contemporary legal scholarship. CPD recognition is available where supported by local law societies and bar associations. A Certificate of Completion is issued upon successful participation.

Stablecoins for Legal Professionals

What you'll learn

  • Characterise stablecoins under multiple legal frameworks including securities law, e-money, payment tokens, deposits, commodities and emerging sui generis classifications, with documented reasoning.
  • Advise on the licensing and authorisation pathways for stablecoin issuance, custody, distribution and use across Kenya, the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and other priority jurisdictions.
  • Identify and manage the legal risks associated with holding, transferring and custodying stablecoins, including insolvency, segregation, commingling and reserve-attestation issues.
  • Draft and negotiate stablecoin-related commercial agreements, including issuer terms, custody arrangements, distribution contracts and settlement agreements.
  • Analyse smart-contract enforceability under common-law principles, including the implications of the UK Law Commission's digital-assets work for African and other common-law jurisdictions.
  • Navigate the AML, CFT, sanctions, Travel Rule and consumer-protection obligations that apply to stablecoin transactions and the institutions that handle them.
  • Address cross-border issues including jurisdiction, choice of law, recognition of foreign judgments and the practical enforcement of judgments and arbitral awards.
  • Structure a stablecoin legal opinion to the standard a sophisticated institutional client will expect.

Who it's for

Partners, in-house counsel, regulatory lawyers, transactional lawyers and compliance counsel.

Prerequisites

Prior completion of Course 01 (Stablecoins: A Strategic Primer).

Programme structure

5 modules · 26 lessons · self-paced after enrollment

Module 1

Introduction

  • Statement of Program Philosophy, Goals and Delivery
  • Purpose of the programme
  • Expected Learning Outcome
  • Mode of delivery
Week 1

Week 1 — Legal Characterisation and Property Rights

  • Comparative characterisation of stablecoins under securities law, e-money frameworks, payment-services regulation, commodities law and emerging sui generis classifications.
  • Property law and digital assets, with reference to the UK Law Commission position, common-law treatment, and the implications for ownership, transfer and security interests.
  • The legal nature of the reserve, including segregation, attestation and the bankruptcy-remoteness question.
  • Issuer claims, holder rights and the legal construction of a redemption obligation.
  • The doctrinal landscape across African common-law and civil-law jurisdictions.
Week 2

Week 2 — Comparative Regulatory Architecture and Licensing

  • The European Union: Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, including e-money tokens, asset-referenced tokens and the significant-stablecoin designation.
  • The United States: the GENIUS Act, OCC interpretive letters, state money-transmitter regimes and the federal-state interaction.
  • The United Kingdom: the FCA stablecoin regime, the Bank of England's systemic position and the Digital Securities Sandbox.
  • The United Arab Emirates: CBUAE Payment Token Services Regulation, ADGM and VARA.
  • Singapore (MAS Single-Currency Stablecoin framework), Hong Kong, Switzerland and Japan.
  • Kenya's Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, Nigeria's SEC Rules, the South African FSCA approach, the Ghana and Mauritius framework.
  • Multi-jurisdictional issuance, the passporting question and substantive equivalence.
Week 3

Week 3 — Transactional Architecture: Contracts, Custody and Financial Crime

  • Drafting the legal architecture of stablecoin transactions: issuer terms, custody agreements, settlement and clearing arrangements, distribution contracts and B2B commercial agreements.
  • Smart-contract enforceability where code and contract diverge.
  • Custody legal construction: bailment, trust, agency and statutory frameworks.
  • Insolvency: ranking of claims, segregation, bankruptcy remoteness and the lessons of FTX, Celsius and Voyager.
  • AML, CFT, sanctions, the Travel Rule and consumer-protection obligations.
  • Choice of law, jurisdiction and dispute resolution in a borderless settlement layer.
Week 4

Week 4 — Advisory Practice and Opinion Delivery

  • Structuring a stablecoin legal opinion: scope, assumptions, qualifications and the standard a sophisticated client will expect.
  • Practice development: identifying mandates, pricing advisory work and the firm-level positioning of a digital-asset practice.
  • African market case studies, including bank-fintech stablecoin partnerships, cross-border remittance structures and regulatory engagement strategies.
  • Workshop: structuring a stablecoin engagement from the initial scoping memo through to opinion delivery.