Current Position & Biography
Joshua Ashley Klayman is Firm-Wide Co-Lead of Digital Assets, Blockchain and Custody at Ashurst Perkins Coie, based in New York. Her practice connects securities and finance law with digital assets, tokenization and financial-market infrastructure. Her current firm biography describes advisory, regulatory and transactional work for digital-native businesses and established financial institutions. It also identifies work on stablecoins, token issuance, custody and the application of the Uniform Commercial Code to digital assets.
Her professional background is in finance and corporate law. Stanford Law School’s 2023 conference biography describes more than a decade of experience advising lenders and borrowers, followed by work with cryptocurrency exchanges, token sellers, investment funds and other digital-asset participants. That historical biography identifies her then-role leading U.S. fintech and blockchain work at Linklaters; her current affiliation is Ashurst Perkins Coie.
Notable Contributions
In October 2016, the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance appointed Klayman to lead its new Legal Working Committee. Its announcement identified her as a founding member and head of Morrison & Foerster’s global Blockchain + Smart Contracts Group. The committee’s remit connected distributed-ledger technology with legal questions surrounding token offerings, payments, banking, privacy and other business activities. This provides a dated record of her involvement in blockchain-specific legal infrastructure.
Klayman also contributes public analysis and professional education. She was listed for Stanford Law School’s June 2023 Fintech Law and Best Practices session. In August 2025, she participated in a Foreign Press Center reporting-tour briefing on U.S. crypto regulation and compliance hosted by the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance. On August 19, 2026, she coauthored an Ashurst Perkins Coie analysis of proposed Regulation Crypto Assets, addressing capital formation, disclosure and decentralization. That publication is commentary on a proposal, not evidence that the discussed framework had become final law.
Why Katharos Is Following Them
Klayman’s work offers a legal-practice perspective on how crypto businesses interact with financial regulation. Her relevance comes from documented digital-asset advisory work, industry legal coordination and public analysis rather than from operating a blockchain network. Following that work can help distinguish a technical product’s capabilities from the legal arrangements required to issue, hold or transact in its assets.
Areas to Follow
Relevant subjects include token issuance, stablecoin structures, digital-asset custody and the relationship between securities transactions and their underlying tokens. Publicly available analysis and dated professional contributions provide the basis for coverage. Changes in regulatory proposals should be checked against official final texts before being described as binding requirements.
Reporting Scope
Coverage focuses on Klayman’s documented professional roles and published work. The United States is her primary professional market, based on her New York position, rather than an inference about nationality. Inclusion does not endorse a legal interpretation, service provider or investment, and does not imply access to confidential client matters.
Katharos Category
Policy & Regulation
Photo Credit
U.S. Department of State, Foreign Press Center, “Joshua Ashley Klayman briefing journalists,” August 27, 2025 briefing. Public domain (Public Domain Mark 1.0). Cropped and resized.