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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Illegal organisations, or other illegal cryptocurrency entities, are groups transacting with cryptocurrency whose activities do not necessarily rise to the level of criminality, but are nevertheless considered risky due to activities balancing on the edge of legality or reputational risk. One example of such entities are implicitly sex-related sites such as RubRatings. The site in question allows massage therapists to publish advertisements encouraging clients to use their sexual services and includes Bitcoin as a payment option. While services offered by the said website are as a rule legal, the RubRatings website implies the availability of sexual services and the site itself is listed as a human trafficking intermediary, therefore the RubRatings organisation, can be categorised as illegal.

Domestic Extremism and Racial Hatred

Another example relates to the organisations and public figures associated with domestic extremism and racial hatred. Many of these organisations accept donations in the form of cryptocurrencies, and it can be expected that more will follow, as with the current interest in cryptocurrencies, organisations will continue to move away from conventional payment. Examples confirming this trend are publications such as the Daily Stormer, as well as the work of public figures such as Nick Fuentes. Extremist rhetoric itself is generally not illegal in most jurisdictions, but many of these groups have been linked to incidents involving outright violence. Examples of such incidents include: The 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia or the 2021 riot in front of the US Capitol. In the latter case, Chainalysis found that several people with alt-right views, including some associated with the rally immediately preceding the riot, had received large donations in bitcoin one month earlier.

Who are Shadow Brokers?

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The epidemic caused by the Covid-19 virus has significantly introduced changes in the search for safe solutions for people-to-people contact. These changes also affected the courts and the mode of court hearings, in order to ensure the greatest possible safety for the parties to the proceedings and court employees. In this situation, the best way to limit direct contact was the possibility of using electronic communication methods.

Legal basis

Amendment to the Polish Act of March 2, 2020 on special solutions related to the prevention, counteraction and combating of COVID-19, other infectious diseases and the emergencies caused by them, implemented by two acts of May 14, 2020 and May 28, 2021, allowed for the possibility of holding court hearings in Polish courts with using means of distance communication. The change resulting directly from article 15 zzs¹ of the Polish Act of 2 March 2020 allowed for the possibility of participating in a remote hearing from a place other than the court, because until now the Polish Code of Civil Procedure allowed for the possibility of conducting a remote hearing, but the persons participating in it had to be present in the court building. Pursuant to article 15zzs¹ point 1 of the Polish Act of 2 March 2020, during the period of the epidemic threat or epidemic state announced due to COVID-19 and within one year of the last of them being recalled in cases examined under the provisions of the Polish Code of Civil Procedure, court hearings or open sessions are held with the use of technical devices enabling them to be carried out at a distance with the simultaneous direct transmission of image and sound, except that the people participating in them do not have to be in the court building, unless holding a hearing or a public hearing without the use of the above devices causes excessive health risk to the participants.[1]

Conducting remote hearings- modes of proceedings

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Online interrogation of a foreign witness by a Polish court in a commercial court case – practical bullet points on the example of a specific witness summons.

The changes in the functioning of the justice system caused by the COVID-19 have been ongoing since the first quarter of 2020. The first of them were introduced in the Polish legal system at the beginning of March 2020, and to date these regulations have already been amended several times. The changes mainly concern court proceedings, the way in which cases are dealt with, as well as the issue of questioning witnesses. The present article will focus on the latter issue, in order to explain in detail how a witness is summoned and examined by a Polish court.

In accordance with article 15 zzs¹ of the Polish Act of March 2, 2020 on special solutions related to the prevention, counteraction and combating of COVID-19, other infectious diseases and crisis situations caused by them (hereinafter as the “Act”):

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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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