Neel Chopra

Neel Chopra leads the Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Practice Group at Steptoe, where he represents clients on regulatory, litigation, and transactional matters.  Prior to joining Steptoe, Neel was the Head of Legal (Americas) at Binance.com, where he oversaw a broad range of issues including obtaining broker-dealer, AML, and Virtual Asset Service Provider licenses, managing a large litigation and investigations docket, advising on issues related payments, derivatives, and product classification, and overseeing several M&A transactions. 

Earlier in his career, Neel held several key positions at the CFTC, including as Senior Special Counsel to the Director of the Division of Enforcement, where he supervised several Task Forces covering the Bank Secrecy Act, Spoofing, Swaps, Insider Trading, Digital Assets, and Foreign Corruption.  Neel started out his career as a law clerk for Judge Walker on the Second Circuit (2009-2010) and for Judge Sand at the SDNY (2008-2009).