This key textbook examines the financial growth and success of digital assets in the contemporary economy. As digital assets and other blockchain applications mature, and regulatory authorities work hard to keep pace, three leading attorneys in the field invite students to consider the legal frameworks pertinent to regulating this new method of exchange. In this, the first textbook of its kind, the authors explore the growth of smart contracts, the application of securities laws to token sales, the regulation of virtual currency businesses, the taxation of digital assets and the intersection of digital assets and criminal law.

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.

“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

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 paper analyzes the legal foundations of central bank digital currency (CBDC) under central bank and monetary law. Absent strong legal foundations, the issuance of CBDC poses legal, financial and reputational risks for central banks. While the appropriate design of the legal framework will up to a degree depend on the design features of the CBDC, some general conclusions can be made. First, most central bank laws do not currently authorize the issuance of CBDC to the general public. Second, from a monetary law perspective, it is not evident that “currency” status can be attributed to CBDC. While the central bank law issue can be solved through rather straithforward law reform, the monetary law issue poses fundmental legal policy challenges.