Lina Bautista López, Edgar Esaul Vite Gómez, Lizet Manzo MartÃnez
This article offers a multidisciplinary approach to the study of cryptocurrencies through the analysis of different academic documents. Analysis is an effort to address the issue of such digital assets from an overview rather than a particular one. The objective is that cryptocurrencies are understood in their concept, origin and operation by those interested in the subject who are not immersed in it. Therefore, two theories that are the monetary theory and the economic theory of the law are considered to support the research in its several aspects such as the economic, legal, social, among others. The analysis makes it possible to identify common trends in the authors without departing from their own opinion of cryptocurrencies considering their discipline.
Hisham Mohamed Hassan Al Hammadi, Muhammad Hafiz bin Badarulzaman, Abdulaziz Fahmi Omar Faqera
The regulatory architecture governing cryptocurrencies and virtual assets in the United Arab Emirates has expanded markedly through Federal Decree-Law No. 20 of 2018, Cabinet Decision No. 10 of 2019, Federal Decree-Law No. 46 of 2021, and Dubai Law No. 4 of 2022, reflecting the state’s ambition to position itself as a leading digital finance hub while addressing money laundering risks. Notwithstanding this legislative progress, significant challenges persist, stemming from the decentralized and pseudonymous nature of cryptocurrencies, fragmented institutional oversight across federal and emirate-level authorities, and constrained supervisory capacity for real-time monitoring. Existing scholarship has largely overlooked the interaction between legal design and institutional enforcement dynamics within the UAE’s cryptocurrency regime, creating a critical gap this study addresses. The study critically evaluates the legal and institutional frameworks governing cryptocurrencies, examines enforcement and compliance vulnerabilities within AML mechanisms, and assesses regulatory risks associated with cryptocurrency market adoption. Employing an exploratory qualitative doctrinal methodology, the analysis systematically examines primary legislation alongside secondary sources drawn from high-impact journals, authoritative monographs, and institutional reports, subjected to rigorous thematic analysis. Guided by Institutional Theory, the findings demonstrate that while the UAE’s framework is normatively comprehensive, enforcement effectiveness is undermined by coordination deficits and technological constraints. The study advances targeted recommendations to enhance regulatory coherence, institutional integration, and risk-based supervision, contributing to legal, financial regulation, international governance, and digital risk studies, while identifying directions for future comparative inquiry.
This study examines whether Ethereum’s market-wide influence strengthened relative to Bitcoin following the Ethereum Berlin upgrade in April 2021. Using one-minute Binance spot data for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and major large-cap cryptocurrencies, we estimate Granger-causality tests and vector autoregressions around the upgrade. The results suggest that Bitcoin retained its benchmark role, but Ethereum’s marginal contribution to short-horizon price discovery increased after Berlin. This shift is especially evident in high-liquidity states, where lagged Ethereum returns became stronger predictors of Bitcoin and other large-cap cryptocurrency returns. The evidence indicates that protocol-level developments may alter the hierarchy of information transmission in crypto markets at the margin, without overturning Bitcoin’s broader benchmark status.
J. D. C. Vergara, D. E. Burdin, R.H. Davletbaev, Д. К. Д. Вергара · 6 authors
In the context of the digitalization of the economy, the problem of organizing effective document management in the non-profit sector has become particularly pressing. Traditional methods of managing information flows struggle to fully adapt to the requirements of transparency, accountability, and the legal significance of data. This article proposes a methodological approach to solving the document management problem based on the integration of distributed ledger technologies and smart contracts. A conceptual model of digital document management has been developed, in which each business event is represented as a smart document with legal verification in a blockchain environment. The paper describes in detail the stages of architecture development, the algorithms for interaction between participants, and the mechanisms for ensuring the immutability of records. The obtained results make it possible to increase transparency and trust between participants in non-profit organizations, ensure the automation of legally significant transactions, and minimize the risk of data falsification. The practical significance lies in the possibility of implementing the proposed approach into existing management systems of non-profit structures, which creates the basis for the formation of digital ecosystems of trusted document management.
The rise of crypto assets has in sharply disrupted traditional legal principles, such as the conflictof-laws doctrine of lex situs which states that property is to be adjudicated in the place where it is located. This tangle of jurisdictional difficulties in Nigeria, the world largest crypto market, requires significant jurisdiction. Crypto assets are digital entry on distributed ledgers not recurrent in geography; they are decentralized digital entries on the distributed ledgers, without the fixed geographical place name commonly favored in traditional territorial interpretation. Plus, there is an issue of regulatory conflict in Nigeria as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) bans banks from purchasing crypto assets while the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) purports to regulate digital assets as securities. This internal conflict makes it difficult for Nigerian courts to determine the legal system and jurisdiction for settling cross-border crypto disputes. In this paper, while the lex situs principle is not conceptually sound, it is a necessary concept for implementation in the digital age, where it needs a profound rewrite, starting with the lex fori imperative. If Nigerian courts want to determine what a situation is, they first have to recognize crypto assets as legal property in order to determine a situs. This paper establishes a three-tiered Nigerian doctrine of digital lex situs, which stems from comparative jurisprudence drawn from the United Kingdom, Singapore and South Africa which favours control-based testing over physical location. Thus, crypto asset is an intangible property, assuming existing legislation such as the Evidence Act 2011 and SEC Rule 2022. Activating a control principle that anchors the situs in the place where the owner gains effective control, whether domicile of the private keyholder or exchange location. The practical approach matches with the common law tradition in Nigeria. The implementation will be to bolster the CBN-SEC contradiction by jointly codifying the code, to establish precise courts of justice to trace and freeze on-chain assets, and, at the regional level, to use regional agreements such as the AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade to implement transnational integration. The recommended approach is a hybrid approach that is legislative clarify, control-based jurisdictional anchoring, and institutional coherence. By solving its internal regulatory conflict and strengthening its judicial capacities, Nigeria can turn its current uncertainty into a leadership opportunity, making it the legal certainty that will enable it to fully participate in the global digital economy.
The pending High Court appeal in Poulton v Conrad raises one of the most significant questions yet considered by an Australian court concerning digital assets: whether Bitcoin constitutes property at common law and, if so, whether traditional proprietary remedies such as detinue and conversion are available. The appeal has attracted competing approaches. The appellant characterises Bitcoin as information recorded on a distributed ledger and argues against proprietary recognition. The respondent emphasises Bitcoin's practical functionality and the control exercised through private keys. The Federal Commissioner of Taxation approaches the issue through established principles of property law and the long-standing taxation treatment of Bitcoin as property. These competing arguments illustrate the continuing difficulty of applying legal concepts developed for physical assets and bilateral legal relationships to decentralised digital assets. This article examines the competing submissions and argues that the debate is often framed too narrowly. The more fundamental question is not whether Bitcoin is property in the abstract, but how the law should characterise exclusive control over a digitally scarce economic resource. In doing so, the article considers Bitcoin's monetary characteristics, its practical operation through cryptographic authentication, and the distinction between legal title and practical control. The article further explores the implications of the appeal beyond cryptocurrency, including secured lending, insolvency, taxation, estate administration and the operation of the Personal Property Securities Act 2009 (Cth). It argues that the long-term significance of the appeal may lie less in the classification of Bitcoin as property and more in whether Australian law begins to recognise cryptographic control as a legally significant form of control in its own right. The article concludes that the future development of digital asset law is likely to depend upon legal frameworks that better align proprietary rights with practical control, particularly where control is exercised through private keys rather than physical possession or contractual rights.
The article examines the regulatory challenges associated with smart contracts in the Russian legal framework and explores the potential role of UNCITRAL instruments in addressing them. The main problem lies in the absence of a clear legal qualification of smart contracts in Russian law. Although smart contracts are used in practice and are indirectly reflected in certain provisions of the Civil Code, Russian legislation does not define them as automatically formed or automatically performed contracts. As a result, their regulation is largely shaped by the internal rules of digital platforms. The article argues that a smart contract should not be reduced either to a traditional contract, an electronic form of contract, or merely a method of performance. Rather, it should be treated as a sui generis legal and technological phenomenon. Particular attention is paid to the principles of technological neutrality, non-discrimination of automated transactions, attribution of actions performed by automated systems, and unexpected outcomes. The UNCITRAL Model Law on Automated Contracting may serve as an important reference point for developing a balanced Russian approach that combines statutory principles with platform-based regulation.
The cost of convenience. Cryptocurrencies are becoming more and more ubiquitous in the financial markets but have also become a basis for all crimes. It would be quite interesting to note this work follows a research field that focuses on crimes relating to cryptocurrencies and, more particularly, market integrity and investor trust implications. We examine how common types of offenses, such as fraud, money laundering and hacking, are presented in practice and consider practical examples which illustrate how strategies associated with cybercrime are constantly evolving. An evaluation of the degree of response from regulators and the effectiveness of measures already in place is used to provide a spotlight into the challenges experienced by the law enforcement and policymakers. We’ll plead for effective cooperation concerning advancements of the technology, frameworks of legislation, and awareness by the public for enhancing security in the cryptocurrency market. From this in-depth analysis, we hope people will become more sensitive to possible risks in using digital currencies and push harder for stricter safeguards for investors and the entire financial system. DOI - https://doi.org/10.65525/SVUP.9788199651524.2026.95-105
The introduction of spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds in January 2024 marked a significant shift in the accessibility of cryptocurrency to traditional investors. This study examines whether ETF approval altered Bitcoin correlation with equity markets and whether this correlation is asymmetric across market conditions. Using daily return data from August 2020 to June 2026, we estimate rolling correlations, conduct Chow tests for structural breaks, and perform quantile regression at the 10th, 50th, and 90th percentiles. We also compare Bitcoin results to a control group of four cryptocurrencies without ETF approval (Cardano, Litecoin, Polkadot, Chainlink). Results show that Bitcoin equity correlation increased modestly following ETF approval from 0.36 to 0.39 for the S&P 500, though a Chow test indicates no statistically significant structural break. Quantile regression reveals strong asymmetric correlation. During down markets, Bitcoin S&P 500 coefficient reached 1.76 pre ETF compared to 1.07 in up markets. This asymmetry decreased substantially after ETF approval, falling 57 percent for the S&P 500 and 84 percent for the Nasdaq. Control assets exhibited higher overall equity sensitivity than Bitcoin but showed smaller reductions in downside asymmetry. These findings suggest that while Bitcoin remains more sensitive to equity market declines, ETF introduction may have reduced extreme correlation asymmetry, and this effect appears partially specific to Bitcoin rather than representing a general crypto market trend. The differential reduction between Bitcoin and control assets suggests that ETF approval had a unique stabilizing effect beyond general crypto market trends.
The enforcement of extraterritorial financial sanctions has historically relied on the structural centralization of correspondent banking networks, primarily utilizing U.S. dollar clearing mechanisms as a territorial nexus for prescriptive jurisdiction. This paper examines how the advent of wholesale Central Bank Digital Currencies (wCBDCs) and distributed ledger technology (DLT) structurally dismantles this transit-layer vulnerability. By facilitating atomic, peer-to-peer settlement in tokenized sovereign assets, DLT-based platforms eliminate the intermediary clearing layer, thereby extinguishing the objective territoriality required for traditional primary sanctions enforcement under statutes such as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Recognizing this technological bypass, the paper argues that sanctioning authorities are executing a strategic regulatory pivot from automated transit chokepoints toward localized endpoint coercion. This shift relies on secondary sanctions deployed against domestic interfaces, leveraging an institution's macroeconomic reliance on the broader U.S. dollar ecosystem. Furthermore, the paper contextualizes this transition within the collapse of multilateral dispute resolution at the World Trade Organization, positing that institutional paralysis has accelerated a technological flight to sovereign ledgers. Ultimately, the transition to decentralized digital currency blocs redefines international economic law, transforming extraterritorial coercion into a localized conflict of defensive statutes and symmetric economic statecraft.
Despite the apparent lack of legal regulation regarding the definition of the content and rules of civil circulation of cryptocurrencies, which is the basis for courts to refuse to consider civil cases involving cryptocurrency, binding relationships related to cryptocurrency certainly exist and are developing. The impossibility of judicial protection of this kind of obligations raises the question of their legal nature and on the basis of what factors it is possible to transform these obligations into civil obligations subject to judicial protection. The purpose of the article is to consider the features of cryptocurrency as an object of natural obligations, to identify facts that serve as grounds for refusing to recognize transactions with cryptocurrency and their judicial protection, to establish the possibility of converting transactions with cryptocurrency from natural obligations to civil ones. When conducting the research, the main methods were general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis. Special methods such as comparative law, historical law, and formal law were used as auxiliary methods. As a result of considering cryptocurrencies as natural obligations that are not subject to legal protection, the conclusion is drawn: transactions with cryptocurrencies have a property such as latency, which removes this type of transaction from the jurisdiction of the courts, giving them the property of naturalness. The facts that serve as grounds for the courts to refuse to protect transactions with cryptocurrency are the following: 1) the owners of cryptocurrencies are individuals or legal entities whose personal law is not Russian law; 2) there is no information about the subjects of the transaction and other interested parties; 3) there is no information about the objects of the transaction; 4) there is no information about the transaction itself.
In Q1 2026, the cryptocurrency market continued the downward trend that began in late 2025, losing more than a fifth of its market capitalization since the start of the year. Market pressure was exacerbated by outflows from ETFs, while deteriorating macroeconomic conditions and ongoing regulatory uncertainty led to a synchronized decline in most crypto assets.
Bitcoin's institutional future is unlikely to converge on a single trajectory. This paper develops a morphological scenario framework for mapping Bitcoin's institutional configuration space under persistent institutional latency, the mismatch between algorithmic execution, rising information velocity, and slower governance-response capacity. Six cleavages structure the analysis: liquidity depth; policy clarity; concentration of holdings; macro-energy stress; trust and information integrity; and credit leverage. Their binary combinations generate 64 configurations, classified by stability, transaction-costminimizing governance form requirements, and resilience properties. The analysis of structural combinations suggests that credit leverage is the primary divider of the space. Transparent leveraged configurations are transitional because credible attestation makes positions legible without supplying the hierarchical governance capacities needed-or available in Bitcoin-to slow, absorb, or coordinate forced adjustment. Opaque leveraged configurations can remain stable where deep liquidity or supportive policy supplies hybrid governance forms supporting absorption capacity. The analysis distinguishes operational durability from epistemic admissibility: stability-first commitments select within the full configuration space, while sovereignty-first commitments restrict the admissible space to configurations preserving Bitcoin's commitment device function. The framework does not predict which Bitcoin world will prevail. It clarifies what each world requires, what each costs institutionally, and which commitments are preserved or surrendered.
This paper introduces the concept of protocol geoeconomics — an analytical framework in which the infrastructure of digital governance is treated as an autonomous instrument for the distribution of power amid the systemic crisis of the multilateral order. The central argument holds that as the traditional mechanisms of global governance lose their function as neutral arbiters, control over the rules of verification, enforcement, and sanctioning of international commitments becomes a key resource of geopolitical agency. Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) in this perspective is not a replacement for diplomatic institutions but the next logical form of infrastructural power — the appropriation of political influence through the ownership of coordination protocols. The paper introduces two operational categories: the sovereign node (a national point of participation in a distributed ledger that cannot be unilaterally disconnected) and protocol Westphalianism (a digital-age analogue of the Westphalian system in which a state's sovereignty is defined by its capacity to maintain a verifying node in critical international coordination systems). A formal model of algorithmic stability is developed through a slashing function and quadratic weighting of influence, providing structural protection against unipolar capture of the system. The dynamic National Influence Index (NI) operationalises representation as a function of verifiable contribution rather than historical privilege. Three contributions emerge. First, infrastructural power is established as a self-standing analytical category describing power exercised through rules of computation rather than through resources or territory. Second, the sovereign node operationalises the concept of digital sovereignty, hitherto largely declarative in the literature. Third, protocol Westphalianism provides a structural exit from the false dichotomy between national sovereignty and global governance. The framework is positioned as the digital extension of Infrastructure Projection of Geopolitics (IPG, WP-IPG-2026-01), with strategic implications for Russia, BRICS+, and the Global South in the construction of Multipolar World Order 2.0.
Abhay Kumar R J, Dr. Bhavya Vikas, Dr. Sharath Ambrosse
The financial sector has been revolutionized by blockchain technology and digital assets, offering novel investment opportunities. Stable coins, in particular, have risen to the fore for their blend of blockchain benefits and moderate price fluctuations. Stable coins differ from other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), which are known for their volatile price swings, with their stable value, meaning they can be employed in payment, trading, decentralized finance (De Fi), and portfolio management. This study aims to assess USDT and DAI's contribution to investment strategies in the current investment landscape between 2022 and 2026 alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum. The secondary data was analysed via time series analysis, 3 year moving average, rolling volatility, market capitalization, and correlation analysis of data obtained from Coin Market Cap, Coin Gecko, Reserve Bank publications and other financial databases. The results show that USDT and DAI possessed less volatility, more price stability and better capital preservation when compared to traditional cryptocurrencies. The study also finds that inflation, interest rates and US Dollar Index (DXY) affect the performance of stable coins and market demand. While there are regulatory, transparency, and market trust issues to address, stable coins have proven to be a potentially low-risk digital asset. In conclusion, according to the study, USDT and DAI are good investment alternatives for those who are looking for stability in the cryptocurrency market and are either conservative or new investors.
The cryptocurrency has represented a revolutionary force in the financial market, with a wide variety of available digital assets that can serve different technological and financial needs. Cryptocurrencies vary considerably. It, therefore, goes without saying that this paper should focus on the wide array of cryptocurrencies, grouping them according to their underlying technology, use cases, and functionalities. It refers to the major classification, including Bitcoin, the first digital currency designed primarily as a unit of store and medium of exchange; altcoins, including alternative cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Ripple, that should introduce new features and functions such as smart contracts and fast processing of transactions; and tokens, which can be issued and managed on existing blockchain platforms and may range from utility in decentralized applications to representing assets. Such categories of analysis are intended to make it possible to distinguish between the roles and technological innovations connected with each type of cryptocurrency. This research adventure offers insight into how the digital currency landscape is emerging and will impact financial systems, investment strategies, and the regulatory approach. This research goes into a comprehensive review of current literature and case studies, engaged with all types of diverse functionalities and applications of cryptocurrencies, providing foundational understanding to stakeholders and policymakers entering this dynamic field. DOI - https://doi.org/10.65525/SVUP.9788199651548.2026.130-141
Bitcoin's governance trajectory at the custody interface is shaped by institutional dynamics that operate independently of any participant's preferences. Two coherent institutional logics organize the interface: sovereignty-first preserves exit optionality through self-custody and minimization of asset specificity; stability-first builds out a financialization stack connecting Bitcoin to legacy financial governance through custodial intermediation, regulatory recognition, derivative markets, and fiduciary precedent. Williamson's fundamental transformation operates at the site of custody concentration, with the initial spot Bitcoin ETF approvals as exemplar, locking institutional holders into bilateral dependencies the permissionless architecture was designed to prevent concentrated economic interests from generating. The result is a structural paradox: institutional holders combine fiduciary obligations preventing credible exit with positions in a governance architecture that supplies no formal voice mechanism, leaving the participants with the largest economic stake possessing the least governance agency. Three structural asymmetries-in constituency formation, ratchet effects, and the endogeneity of regulatory pressure on the self-custody arena-bias the institutional environment toward stability-first regions of the scenario space regardless of any participant's preferences. Two counterweights operate against the bias: the gateway dynamic, an endogenous individual-level migration toward self-custody, and structural unwinding, an exogenous shift through which degradation of the institutional environment transforms the Coasean cost-benefit calculus. A hard-fork producing a financially-compliant variant of Bitcoin exists as a third trajectory.
As institutional capital increasingly flows into digital asset markets, and as the intersection of decentralized finance (DeFi) and traditional finance (TradFi) deepens structurally, a critical pricing gap has emerged: the absence of a rigorous Crypto XVA™ framework that addresses the unique risk characteristics of blockchain-based financial instruments. Prior scholarship has examined smart contracts as potential eliminators of counterparty risk (Morini & Sams 2015; Fries & Kohl-Landgraf 2018), but has not systematically constructed the affirmative case for a crypto-native valuation adjustment architecture. This paper addresses that gap. We make three principal contributions. First, we identify the novel risk factors unique to digital asset markets — smart contract vulnerability, oracle dependence, liquidity regime fragmentation, stablecoin reserve opacity, bridge transfer risk, and gas execution uncertainty — and argue each warrants a distinct valuation adjustment category. Second, we establish the critical analytical distinction between duration-bearing instruments (perpetual swaps, LP positions, DeFi lending) and instantaneous transactions (DEX spot swaps, bridge transfers), showing that the appropriate mathematical treatment differs fundamentally between these two classes and that conflating them produces analytically incoherent results. Third, we derive a generalized Crypto XVA integral that collapses appropriately in both regimes and demonstrate its application across five canonical DeFi instrument types with worked numerical examples.
In March 2026, researchers at Google Quantum AI published resource estimates showing that the elliptic-curve cryptography used by Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many other major blockchains could be broken with far fewer quantum-computing resources than previously believed. The authors validated their estimates through a zero-knowledge proof while withholding the underlying circuits. Within two months, an independent researcher reproduced the circuits and a public challenge improved on them. The quantum threat to digital assets has moved from a remote theoretical concern to a concrete migration problem. At the same time, U.S. policymakers are integrating quantum-vulnerable blockchain infrastructure into the financial system through federally regulated stablecoins, chartered crypto institutions, exchange-traded products, and tokenized securities. This Article examines the collision between those policy trajectories. It argues that financial stability should govern the response and that the federal objective should be containment of transmission from a failing legacy network into regulated finance. Congress should create a quantum-resilience perimeter under which covered intermediaries, stablecoin issuers, investment products, and market infrastructures may, after a defined transition, operate only through networks and digitalasset arrangements certified as quantum-resilient. Qualification should require protection of every material cryptographic function and a credible plan to prevent mass unauthorized monetization of assets controlled by deprecated credentials. Protocol communities would retain authority to choose the technical method, including migration, quarantine, recovery, rate limits, issuer-led reissuance, or permanent unspendability. Nonqualified networks could continue through self-custody and peer-to-peer use, but they would remain outside regulated custody, collateral, derivatives, tokenized markets, and U.S.-regulated dollar channels. The proposal thus protects financial stability without directing consensus rules or prohibiting private ownership.
Digital assets have become a significant and indispensable part of the modern financial system and have brought innovations in the areas of payments, investments, and financial intermediation. However, their expansion brings numerous regulatory challenges, particularly with regard to preventing money laundering, user identification, the legal treatment of decentralized finance, and privacy protection. Approaches to the regulation of digital assets vary significantly among jurisdictions - while some countries introduce comprehensive legislation, others apply restrictive or fragmented policies. Serbia has positioned itself as one of the first countries in the region to adopt a specific Law on Digital Assets (2020), thereby establishing a regulatory framework for this market. This paper analyses the legal challenges of digital assets, exploring national and international regulatory approaches, including the European Union's MiCA Regulation. It also examines the need to strike a balance between fostering innovation and ensuring the stability of the financial system. The key finding is that continuous international cooperation and a flexible regulatory framework are necessary to enable the sustainable development of digital assets and the technologies that support them.