Early Regulations of Distributed Ledger Technology/Blockchain Providers: A Comparative Case Study

Abstract

Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) such as Blockchain have been heralded for their potential to fundamentally disrupt traditional industries and longstanding practices in private and public business-es. In the financial sectors, for example, quite a number of novel financial technology (fintech) services based on DLT/Blockchain have been introduced with cryptocur-rencies representing prominent cases. While the already highly regulated financial sectors have emerged as ear-ly targets for DLT/Blockchain induced disruption, a diverse set of other areas, such as healthcare record keeping, insurance record keeping, industrial and retail supply chain management, property registries, citizen identification systems, and voting systems to name a few, has also come into the focus of DLT/Blockchain innovation. These new types of services might be in need of both complementary and novel regulations for DLT/Blockchain-based services. Interestingly, smaller jurisdictions such as Bermuda, Gibraltar, Malta, and Liechtenstein were among the first to provide advice and regulation for DLT/Blockchain service provisions. The study compares these early regulatory approaches to each other and discusses the prospects of DLT/Blockchain service regulation based on the study’s findings. DLT/Blockchain service regulation appears to incorporate predominantly principle-based rather than rule-based regulations, which makes the regulation en-forcement a uniquely individual case-based task.