Mahmoud Abuwasel is the Disputes Partner at Wasel & Wasel, a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria, and an AAA-empaneled arbitrator. A Harvard graduate and leading authority on digital asset litigation, he routinely handles complex cross-border crypto-asset disputes, mass crypto arbitrations, and exchange platform liability. He is the author of the seminal treatise UAE Crypto Litigation and a contributor to Kluwer Law’s upcoming Crypto Asset Disputes.
We asked him how his expertise informs his approach on the American Arbitration Association® Blockchain & Web3 Disputes Panel.
Tell us about your professional background and how you became involved in Web3-related disputes, including matters involving blockchain, cryptocurrency, digital assets, or smart contracts.
My background is firmly rooted in high-stakes international dispute resolution, cross-border litigation, and global arbitration. I am the Disputes Partner at Wasel & Wasel, a Tier-1 international dispute resolution firm, and hold multiple degrees, including a Master’s from Harvard University. I am an admitted Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria (Australia), a registered practitioner across global jurisdictions (including the UAE's ADGM and DIFC courts), and serve as an arbitrator on numerous international panels globally, including the AAA.
My journey with Web3 technologies began over a decade ago. I was first consulted on cryptocurrency matters in late 2012, and by 2013, I had purchased my first mining machine. As commercial arrangements grew more complex, so did the resulting conflicts. I integrated my technical fluency into my practice, establishing a specialty practice built specifically for the decentralized economy. Since then, I have acted as counsel in landmark digital asset disputes worldwide. Given the inherently borderless nature of digital assets, my work has been highly multijurisdictional. Over the years, I have assisted on crypto disputes across a broad spectrum of legal frameworks, including the US, UK, BVI, SVG, El Salvador, Hong Kong, the UAE, the Netherlands, Canada, and Singapore.
This practical experience culminated in my authorship of the treatise UAE Crypto Litigation, featuring a foreword by a senior judge in charge of a common law digital economy court and registered with the U.S. Library of Congress, and my upcoming contribution to Kluwer Law International’s volume, Crypto Asset Disputes.
What types of Web3 disputes do you most often see in your work? How do they differ from more traditional commercial, financial, or technology disputes?
In my contentious practice, I most frequently handle high-value disputes involving major crypto-exchange platforms regarding systemic issues arising from spot and futures trading, market crashes, the behavior of leveraged tokens, and the fairness of liquidation engines. Notably, this includes my involvement in mass crypto arbitrations under different arbitral rules. I also routinely litigate claims against unlicensed Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs), prosecute directors exercising fraudulent control over corporate crypto-wallets, and navigate complex intellectual property and revenue structuring disputes associated with Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and "Play-to-Earn" (P2E) projects.
These disputes differ fundamentally from traditional commercial, financial, or technology conflicts because they exist at the precise friction point between code and contract. In the digital asset space, systemic failures, alleged “hacks,” and "rug pulls" have often been viewed as acceptable losses due to market informality. Litigating these matters to hold operators accountable demands unparalleled technical fluency. Crucially, my work involves a deep comprehension of highly complex evidence issues, requiring extensive collaboration with technical experts and leading blockchain analysis firms to navigate on-chain asset tracing, digital forensics, and API data accuracy.
What trends are you seeing in Web3 disputes? What developments do you think will most shape the future of dispute resolution in this area?
A prominent trend I have observed and analyzed in my book is what I describe as "judicial pragmatism." Historically, the industry operated in a legislative void. In response, courts and arbitral tribunals consistently looked past the high-tech novelty of blockchain to identify the core economic substance of transactions. By applying foundational principles of civil and commercial law, the judiciary has brought much-needed clarity and predictability to an informal market.
Looking forward, the development that will most shape the future of dispute resolution in this space is the intersection of these mature legal principles with emerging, bespoke regulatory regimes. As the legal framework crystallizes, dispute resolution will rely increasingly on specialized international commercial arbitration, which offers the technical fluency and procedural flexibility required to handle these global conflicts and mass consumer claims. Ultimately, the focus of the industry will shift heavily toward preventative transactional design, integrating robust contractual architecture to mitigate risks and address structural evidentiary vulnerabilities before disputes even arise.