This thought-provoking book challenges the way we think about regulating cryptoassets. Bringing a timely new perspective, Syren Johnstone critiques the application of a financial regulation narrative to cryptoassets, questioning the assumptions on which it is based and whether regulations developed in the 20th century remain fit to apply to a technology emerging in the 21st.
This insightful book presents a radical rethinking of the relationship between law, regulation, and technology. While in traditional legal thinking technology is neither of particular interest nor concern, this book treats modern technologies as doubly significant, both as major targets for regulation and as potential tools to be used for legal and regulatory purposes. It explores whether our institutions for engaging with new technologies are fit for purpose.
This stimulating book considers the ways in which historical jurisprudence deserves to be rethought, arguing that there is much more to the history of legal thought than the ideas, and ideology, of the nineteenth and early twentieth century jurists, such as Karl von Savigny and Sir Henry Maine.
This report offers an analytical framework that allows for more systemic assessments of distributed ledger technology (DLT) and its applications. It examines the evolution and typology of the emergent technology, its existing and projected applications, and regulatory and policy issues that they entail. This report highlights the trends, concerns, and potential opportunities of DLTs, especially for Asian markets. It also identifies the benefits and risks to using DLT and offers a functional and proportional approach to these issues.
Cryptoassets represent one of the most high profile financial products in the world, and fastest growing financial products in history. From Bitcoin, Etherium and Ripple's XRP-so called "utility tokens" used to access financial services-to initial coin offerings that in 2017 rivalled venture capital in money raised for startups, with an estimated $5.6 billion (USD) raised worldwide across 435 ICOs. All the while, technologists have hailed the underlying blockchain technology for these assets as potentially game changing applications for financial payments and record-keeping. At the same time, cryptoassets have produced considerable controversy. Many have turned out to be lacklustre investments for investors. Others, especially ICOs, have also attracted noticeable fraud, failing firms, and alarming lapses in information-sharing with investors. Consequently, many commentators around the world have pressed that ICO tokens be considered securities, and that concomitant registration and disclosure requirements attach to their sales to the public. This volume assembles an impressive group of scholars, businesspersons and regulators to collectively write on cryptoassets. This volume represents perspectives from across the regulatory ecosystem, and includes technologists, venture capitalists, scholars, and practitioners in securities law and central banking.
This book examines the legal and regulatory aspects of cryptocurrency and blockchain and the emerging practical issues that these issues involve. The analysis covers a range of advanced economies across the world, in America, Europe and Asia. The book describes, explains and analyses the nature of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain systems they are constructed on in these major world economies and considers relevant law and regulation and their shortcomings. It will be of use and interest to academics, lawyers, regulators and anyone involved with cryptocurrencies and blockchain.
This book focuses on the building of a crypto economy as an alternative economic space and discusses how the crypto economy should be governed. The crypto economy is examined in its productive and financialised aspects, in order to distil the need for governance in this economic space. The author argues that it is imperative for regulatory policy to develop the economic governance of the blockchain-based business model, in order to facilitate economic mobilisation and wealth creation. The regulatory framework should cater for a new and unique enterprise organisational law and the fund-raising and financing of blockchain-based development projects. Such a regulatory framework is crucially enabling in nature and consistent with the tenets of regulatory capitalism. Further, the book acknowledges the rising importance of private monetary orders in the crypto economy and native payment systems that do not rely on conventional institutions for value transfer. A regulatory blueprint is proposed for governing such monetary orders as 'commons' governance. The rise of Decentralised Finance and other financial innovations in the crypto economy are also discussed, and the book suggests a framework for regulatory consideration in this dynamic landscape in order to meet a balance of public interest objectives and private interests. By setting out a reform agenda in relation to economic and financial governance in the crypto economy, this forward-looking work argues for the extension of 'regulatory capitalism' to this perceived 'wild west' of an alternative economic space. It advances the message that an innovative regulatory agenda is needed to account for the economically disruptive and technologically transformative developments brought about by the crypto economy.
Provides a comprehensive and cutting-edge guide to FinTech. The chapters are written by an international selection of authors from Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia. They are the leading experts in their relevant subject and come from both academia and industry. Each chapter provides a balanced overview of the current state of the art in the field, identifies potential issues, and discusses future trends. The book is analytical and engaging, and the authors reflect on where the research agenda is likely to advance in the future.
“Blockchains will matter crucially; this book, beautifully and clearly written for a wide audience, powerfully demonstrates how.” —Lawrence Lessig “Attempts to do for blockchain what the likes of Lawrence Lessig and Tim Wu did for the Internet and cyberspace—explain how a new technology will upend the current legal and social order... Blockchain and the Law is not just a theoretical guide. It’s also a moral one.” —Fortune Bitcoin has been hailed as an Internet marvel and decried as the preferred transaction vehicle for criminals. It has left nearly everyone without a computer science degree confused: how do you “mine” money from ones and zeros? The answer lies in a technology called blockchain. A general-purpose tool for creating secure, decentralized, peer-to-peer applications, blockchain technology has been compared to the Internet in both form and impact. Blockchains are being used to create “smart contracts,” to expedite payments, to make financial instruments, to organize the exchange of data and information, and to facilitate interactions between humans and machines. But by cutting out the middlemen, they run the risk of undermining governmental authorities’ ability to supervise activities in banking, commerce, and the law. As this essential book makes clear, the technology cannot be harnessed productively without new rules and new approaches to legal thinking. “If you...don’t ‘get’ crypto, this is the book-length treatment for you.” —Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution “De Filippi and Wright stress that because blockchain is essentially autonomous, it is inflexible, which leaves it vulnerable, once it has been set in motion, to the sort of unforeseen consequences that laws and regulations are best able to address.” —James Ryerson, New York Times Book Review
Trade has always been shaped by technological innovation. In recent times, a new technology, Blockchain, has been greeted by many as the next big game-changer. Can Blockchain revolutionize international trade? This publication seeks to demystify the Blockchain phenomenon by providing a basic explanation of the technology. It analyses the relevance of this technology for international trade by reviewing how it is currently used or can be used in the various areas covered by WTO rules. In doing so, it provides an insight into the extent to which this technology could affect cross-border trade in goods and services, and intellectual property rights. It discusses the potential of Blockchain for reducing trade costs and enhancing supply chain transparency as well as the opportunities it provides for small-scale producers and companies. Finally, it reviews various challenges that must be addressed before the technology can be used on a wide scale and have a significant impact on international trade.
