Crypto Traders Can Automate Legal Requests With New DoNotPay Services

A service that started with parking tickets has now found its way to the crypto markets.

AccessTimeIconMay 18, 2021 at 10:07 p.m. UTC
Updated Aug 19, 2021 at 9:31 a.m. UTC

Presented By Icon

Election 2024 coverage presented by

Stand with crypto

Robot lawyer platform DoNotPay is expanding to cryptocurrency businesses, offering a suite of services to automate the drafting and sending of legal letters to crypto exchanges.

Joshua Browder, DoNotPay’s founder, started the chatbot subscription service after moving to the U.S. from England and receiving a number of parking tickets, he said. 

  • Bitcoin Mining in the U.S. Will Become 'a Lot More Decentralized': Core Scientific CEO
    13:18
    Bitcoin Mining in the U.S. Will Become 'a Lot More Decentralized': Core Scientific CEO
  • Binance to Discontinue Its Nigerian Naira Services After Government Scrutiny
    05:10
    Binance to Discontinue Its Nigerian Naira Services After Government Scrutiny
  • The first video of the year 2024
    04:07
    The first video of the year 2024
  • The last regression video of the year 3.67.0
    40:07
    The last regression video of the year 3.67.0
  • “I was writing the same letter over and over and thought, ‘This could so easily be automated,’” he said. “I started it by accident because I'm a bad driver [but] people were writing in with all the other problems they had. Lawyers were charging hundreds of dollars an hour.”

    Over the past five years, the service offered letters for securing bank fee refunds, canceling subscriptions and suing robocallers. The expansion to crypto perhaps reflects the mainstreaming of digital assets, where Robinhood natives seize on the latest crypto coin of the moment with reckless abandon. 

    DoNotPay has now developed five products designed to send letters to crypto exchanges for a variety of purposes, such as asking exchanges to unfreeze funds. The service also plans to accept bitcoin and ether as payment starting on June 1. 

    “The first [form] is for getting funds frozen and unfrozen much more quickly, so we compiled all the laws around the freezing and unfreezing of funds, and we force the exchange to back up [their policies],” he said. 

    Another service will track funds stolen through hacks and notify exchanges if the stolen funds land in an exchange wallet.

    Other services include reporting pump-and-dump schemes to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, filing exchange disputes and tracking airdrops.

    “I think these big companies know the consumers are powerless if the disputes are small so we want to be the person that comes in [and helps],” Browder said.

    DoNotPay is limited to providing legal letters for small claims, he said. It won’t replace the services of an actual lawyer with bigger issues.

    “Our limitation is we don’t have people go into the courtroom, so any sort of dispute over $10,000 or more we could never do,” he said.

    Disclosure

    Please note that our privacy policy, terms of use, cookies, and do not sell my personal information have been updated.

    CoinDesk is an award-winning media outlet that covers the cryptocurrency industry. Its journalists abide by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk has adopted a set of principles aimed at ensuring the integrity, editorial independence and freedom from bias of its publications. CoinDesk is part of the Bullish group, which owns and invests in digital asset businesses and digital assets. CoinDesk employees, including journalists, may receive Bullish group equity-based compensation. Bullish was incubated by technology investor Block.one.


    Learn more about Consensus 2024, CoinDesk's longest-running and most influential event that brings together all sides of crypto, blockchain and Web3. Head to consensus.coindesk.com to register and buy your pass now.