Blockchain Papers

Cong Jiang

No abstract is available for this record.

Silviu OJOG

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is the term used to describe financial applications and services built on blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrencies. DeFi uses blockchain as a trust mechanism, enabling unknown parties to transact with each other, removing unnecessary intermediaries, and lowering transaction costs. In order to seize the potential of blockchain technology in this particular industry and how it can be translated into other niches, it is necessary to understand its mechanics, implications, and particularities. This paper aims to present the operating principles, technologies, and security implications related to blockchain-based decentralized finance.

Jorge Luis Baca de las Casas

By 2021 a structural disconnect existed between two large pools of capital: real estate owners holding significant value in physical property but constrained by the high cost of capital and the bureaucratic and legal burdens of accessing bank credit lines, and crypto investors holding liquid capital but lacking real-world collateral against which to deploy it productively within the emerging decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. This whitepaper describes the Bitestate architecture, designed to bridge that gap. Real estate is transferred to a local trust managed by a registered trustee bank that secures legal enforceability and ensures KYC and AML compliance; the underlying "Rights of Disposal" are then tokenized as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and used as collateral against revolving asset-backed credit lines provided by crypto lender pools; in the event of default, smart contracts trigger a notification flow that instructs the trustee bank to liquidate the compromised asset and repay the lender. The architecture targets real estate portfolios across Latin America — Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and Chile — with the investment vehicle anchored in a European regulatory regime contemplating the Tokens and Trustworthy Service Providers Act (TVTG) and its Ordinance (TVTV), commonly referred to as a "Blockchain Act" (the specific jurisdiction was left as an open placeholder in the 2021 draft). The contribution of the document is a concrete, legally structured architecture for integrating real-world real estate as collateral in the DeFi ecosystem.

Niko Soininen, Kaisa Huhta

Decentralization describes a process in which there is a shift from a centrally planned, financed and operated energy system to a more diffuse model where these activities are shared between an increasing number of parties. It accordingly plays a key role in democratizing the energy sector and can also contribute to various other goals. For example, decentralization coupled with increased use of renewable energy sources can improve the sustainability of energy systems. However, it also increases their complexity and the likelihood of surprising, unwanted dynamics within them as more consumers operate as producers, financiers and operators in that sphere. Consequently, energy systems become more unpredictable as central producers, distributors and state institutions have less control over the dynamics of the system as a whole. Against this background, this chapter analyses decentralized electricity systems through the lens of complexity theory, which is an interdisciplinary field of research that addresses complex systems in which large networks of components and/or agents collectively produce emergent, surprising dynamics. The chapter uses complexity theory to explain decentralized electricity systems as complex systems and to evaluate – using the EU as a case study – whether the EU Clean Energy for All Europeans legislative package adequately addresses the issues that emerge in regulating such a complex system.

Pierre Schammo

For enthusiasts, distributed ledger technology (DLT) and smart contract technology (SCT) promise a future of frictionless interactions and decentralisation. In practice, however, it is widely acknowledged that this vision faces significant challenges. These include legal challenges, technological challenges, but also implementation challenges. The latter arise because delivering the DLT/SCT vision does not take place in a vacuum, but in a setting populated by existing market actors that operate on the basis of pre-existing technologies and absent an industry-wide layer of standards to support technological change and the vision of frictionless interactions. This article seeks to contribute to the literature interested in implementation challenges. Its aim is two-fold: to examine implementation challenges and to take stock of current market efforts to overcome them. In particular, this article focusses on the efforts of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) and its initiatives to ‘standardise to digitise’. It will show that these initiatives can usefully be examined as an attempt to help the industry coordinate on a common foundational standards layer. However, this article also finds that the success of ISDA’s efforts is by no means certain. Nor are its efforts without raising some concerns.

Lauren Fahy, Scott Douglas, Judith van Erp

Invented in 2008 with Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies represent a radical technological innovation in finance and banking; one which threatened to disrupt the existing regulatory regimes governing those sectors. This article examines, from a reputation management perspective, how regulatory agencies framed their response. Through a content analysis, we compare communications from financial conduct regulators in the UK, US, and Australia. Despite the risks, challenges, and uncertainties involved in cryptocurrency supervision, we find regulators treat the technology as an opportunity to bolster their reputation in the immediate wake of the Global Financial Crisis. Regulators frame their response to cryptocurrencies in ways which reinforce the agency’s ingenuity and societal importance. We discuss differences in framing between agencies, illustrating how historical, political, and legal differences between regulators can shape their responses to radical innovations.

Andrej Ilievski

The aim of the paper is to examine the impact of fintechon central banks and policy objectives, butalso, the role of central banks in enabling fintech in fulfilling its promises. Namely, for the financial sector fintech promises shorter, speedier transactions; greater capital efficiency; and stronger operational elasticity. For consumers, fintech promises opportunities, both in form of new products and services but also in improving the existing one at lower costs. In general, fintech promises a more inclusive financial system, with people better connected, more informed and increasingly empowered. In order to support the development of fintech central banks should consider many aspects like: exploring the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT), partnering with fintech companies and calibrating its regulatory approach to fintech developments.

Sebastian Grund

Abstract The European sovereign debt crisis and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic have revealed the European Economic and Monetary Union’s fragility, which essentially emanates from the inherent tension between a single monetary policy and decentralized fiscal policies. To cushion economic and financial shocks and sever the sovereign-bank doom loop, different proposals to create a common public debt security have been put forward, although none of them has so far seen the light of day. Building on pertinent economic and finance scholarship, this article reviews four promising safe asset proposals from a legal perspective: Sovereign bond-backed securities (SBBS), E-bonds, Purple bonds, and Coronabonds. Rather than focusing on their feasibility under EU law or national constitutional law, this article compares the proposals from an investor perspective against the backdrop of the following formal and functional legal characteristics that render assets ‘safe’: governing law, dispute settlement forum, investor protection, and investor representation in sovereign debt restructurings. Against this backdrop, targeted recommendations on critical design elements of safe assets, with the aim of reconciling the economic policy objectives with the pertinent legal constraints, are advanced.

Daniel Gozman, Jonathan Liebenau, Tomaso Aste

This article explores the potential for applying blockchain technology for regulatory compliance and for reducing compliance costs and easing regulatory burdens. We describe the development of the Project Maison proof-of-concept blockchain system for regulatory reporting of mortgages in the U.K. This case study identified use cases and also the risks of increased supervision and loss of control and the governance challenges and trade-offs inherent in applying a decentralized approach to regulatory reporting.

Renato Mangano

The market for cryptocurrencies is interspersed with cases of loss, theft and fraud and a new transnational practice in bankruptcy law is emerging whereby cryptocurrency exchanges compensate the injured users on a collective basis. This paper will argue: first, that this trend has transplanted into Asia and Europe the US idea according to which bankruptcy law can be employed to avoid mass litigation; secondly, that this trend has transcended the debate about the characterization of digital assets, including the concerns of those scholars who maintain that digital coins cannot be objects of property; and thirdly that – since this practice follows the pattern of so-called restorative justice and since cryptocurrencies are highly volatile – injured users, as creditors of the exchanges, ought to be satisfied in kind, i.e. incryptocurrencies themselves.

Evariest Callens

No abstract is available for this record.

Ori Oren

In the summer of 2017, a new method of funding startup businesses exploded from a small capital market to one worth billions. “Initial Coin Offerings” (“ICOs”) can appear to be a simple crowdfunding campaign or a public stock offering at the same time and, until recently, have been conducted with no regulatory oversight. Due to the high risk of fraud, the SEC has begun cracking down on ICOs, requiring many issuers to register their “ICO tokens” as securities or halt trading entirely. This Note looks at the regulatory precedents and factors that the SEC has considered to decide whether a token is a security, and proposes an alternative legal system to securities law that may be better suited for regulating certain types of ICO tokens. This Note concludes that, for ICOs that raise money for a decentralized autonomous organization—in which all token purchasers hold equal management rights—uniform partnership law is the ideal mode of regulation.

Alfred Ruoxi Zhang, Anujan Raveenthiran, Justin Mukai, Ramisha Naeem · 7 authors

Compared to initial public offerings (IPOs) that are sales of company ownerships, and loans that are sales of debt claims, initial coin offerings (ICOs) are sales of promises of cryptocurrency appreciation. However, regulatory uncertainties continue to prohibit successful widespread adoption. This paper examines ICOs with varying levels of success, including Mastercoin (now Omni) and Kin, as well as fraudulent ICOs, like REcoin and OneCoin. The discussion of the benefits and flaws within the ICO market examines regulatory challenges concerning risks transferred to investors through information asymmetry, while questioning the ability of regulations to enhance investor protection mechanisms without undermining the fundamental value of cryptocurrencies and ICOs as a viable funding structure.

Jeremmy Okonjo

This thesis examines one key research question: how has the ideational infrastructure of global financial markets impacted on the regulatory reforms within the transnational and Third World financial regulatory orders? It explores the ideological and performative role of ideas and their related technologies and practices in the reproduction of financial capitalism and regulatory neoliberalism in the globalized financial markets and related transnational and national regulatory institutions, specifically in Third World countries. The regulation of the liberalized interest rates in Kenya's credit market forms the basis of a three-part case study on reproduction of regulatory neoliberalism in Third World countries. The study is premised on the observation that the Third World's historical contestation of the transnational financial regulatory order has registered both progress and challenges, but regulatory neoliberalism and the globalization of financial capitalism grows more resilient, despite periodic setbacks. While noting the significance of structural power, stakeholder interests, and material embedding, in the reproduction of regulatory neoliberalism, this thesis identifies and focuses on specific ideas and related technologies and practices as making an under-stated contribution. It therefore explores the ideological and performative power of neoclassical economic theories, doctrines of legal formalism, technological ideas, artefacts, and their related practices, which form the ideational infrastructure of contemporary financial markets. The thesis examines their role in constructing meaning, relationships and institutions, allocating identities, interests and capacities, defining problems and their solutions, thereby enabling and constraining action. The main argument explored in this study is that the ideational infrastructure of the financial markets legitimates, constitutes and performs neoliberal financial markets and regulatory neoliberalism, within the transnational and national financial regulatory institutions. By presenting neoliberal financial markets, and regulatory neoliberalism as the only rational form of economic organization, this ideational infrastructure conceals their reproduction of inequality and power asymmetries between developed and developing countries in transnational regulation, and also between lenders and borrowers in Kenya's credit markets. It also restricts the regulatory possibilities available to Third World policy makers and regulators for addressing the externalities of neoliberal financial markets, including, as explored in the Kenya case studies, high interest rates and high indebtedness. The related key findings of the thesis are four-pronged. The first finding is the transformation of neoliberal hegemony in global financial markets from the centralized structural, military and economic power of the US and other developed countries, to a more decentralized, diffused hegemony embedded in ideologies, discourses, performative practices, and technologies. This is evident in the transformation of liberal hegemony in response to Third World contestation. The second finding is the 'relatively autonomous' agential power of legal, economic and technological ideas and practices underpinning regulatory neoliberalism, when decoupled from their originators. This is demonstrated by the origination and diffusion of ideas to and from the Bretton Woods institutions, and also their embedding within the bureaucracies of Kenya financial markets regulators. The third insight is the complex, co-constitutive, but not necessarily causal, relationships between legal formalism, neoclassical economic theories, technological ideas, and their related practices, which contribute to the resilience and durability of transnational regulatory neoliberalism. The thesis demonstrates the embodiment of these ideas and practices in the credit information sharing infrastructure, and their simultaneous constitution of neoliberal interest rates markets in Kenya. The fourth insight is the conceptual indeterminacy, inconsistency, and contradiction at the heart of the legal, economic and technological ideologies, and possibilities of harnessing their ideological and performative power towards establishing alternative economic organizations. The three Kenya case studies demonstrates the failure of the legal, economic and technological ideologies and practices employed by Kenyan financial regulators in the interest rates market. The thesis concludes that the present Third World efforts aimed at contesting the regulatory neoliberalism at the heart of the transnational financial regulatory order should also focus on the ideological and performative power of the ideational infrastructure of the global financial markets. In doing so, TWAIL practitioners should of necessity adopt an interdisciplinary approach in their reflection, conceptualization, articulation, dissemination and legal operationalization of an alternative international financial law praxis.

William J. Magnuson

The recent decade has witnessed an extraordinary degree of innovation in the financial sector. Developments in financial technology, computing power, and networking theory have allowed decentralized online platforms such as Bitcoin to fundamentally change the way that financial services are provided. While these innovations have been applauded by many as bringing a welcome degree of competition to a sector long dominated by powerful incumbents, they also create a set of challenges for current financial regulation. How do fiduciary standards apply to algorithms? How does online finance affect the behavior of investors? And more generally, how can regulators monitor and constrain the financial industry when it is increasingly run by autonomous, dispersed computer networks? This Article argues that current financial regulation is inadequate to address the unique problems presented by the rise of Bitcoin and other fintech industries. In particular, these innovations raise concerns about the ability of financial regulation to promote three inter-related financial goals: the efficient allocation of capital, the protection of consumers, and the prevention of systemic risk. These goals, at the core of current approaches to financial regulation, are all challenged by fintech’s defining feature: its reliance on disembodied institutions and complex algorithms for its functioning. These traits render the traditional tools used by regulators to discipline markets—substantive behavioral obligations, the threat of sanctions, and the constraining effect of reputation—largely ineffective. The Article concludes by proposing a set of principles to guide lawmakers in designing a more effective financial regulatory structure for the Bitcoin era.

Olena Burutina

Nowadays the cryptocurrency industry is constantly growing and developing. Each year it attracts a big number of investors and businessmen from all over the world. Since the creation of Bitcoin in 2009, more than a thousand new cryptocurrencies with different features were created. Most countries are already working on an effective regulatory mechanism for the cryptocurrency industry. However, the question is whether the regulation will not contradict the essential features of digital currency, such as decentralization, independence and anonymity. This MA thesis analyzes the issue of cryptocurrency regulation as an important stage in their development and evolution. I compare the regulatory frameworks, developed by Canada, the USA, Great Britain and China, which are considered to be the world leaders in the cryptocurrency industry and the ICO sector. In this MA thesis I also try to explain how cryptocurrencies are perceived both by the cryptocurrency community and the regulators in order to give an answer to the question "What is a cryptocurrency?". Finally, this thesis also discusses the issue of cryptocurrency lobbying as an important part of the communication between the state and the third sector.

Lars Klöhn, Nicolas Parhofer

No abstract is available for this record.

Pierre Lortie

On May 26, 2010, Canada’s Minister of Finance tabled in the House of Commons a draft Securities Act. The purpose of the Act is to establish Federal government jurisdiction over securities legislation and create a Federal Securities Regulatory Authority. With this initiative, the Federal government proposes to centralize the regulatory apparatus to ensure uniformity of policies and regulations across Canada and meet international standards of quality and comprehensiveness. But this initiative also raises significant constitutional and economic policy issues. In a comprehensive paper examining the main arguments supporting a centralized securities apparatus, Pierre Lortie, Senior Business Advisor at Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP, argues that sound public policy should move ahead only if there is a strong body of empirical evidence demonstrating that the performance of the current regime is significantly inferior to that of other countries — particularly the United States — and that a centralization of the regulatory apparatus is necessary to correct the situation. The paper demonstrates that Canada’s decentralized securities regulatory regime has in fact shown flexibility, a great capacity to adapt to changing circumstances and an unrelenting ability to respond to particular industry or regional needs. It has also provided strong assurances against the hasty adoption of disruptive and costly regulations because it is less susceptible to the imposition of politically expedient or faddish requirements or the influence of a dominant industry or interest groups. In contrast, a centralized system runs the risk of turning into a disruptive, costly and regrettable initiative that will not give Canadians what they expect, while erasing many of the benefits achieved so far.

Daniel Hellwig, Goran Karlic, Arnd Huchzermeier

This chapter looks beyond the novelty of self-executing ‘smart contracts’ in blockchain networks and explores developments against the background fact that commercial parties have, for centuries, used documentary credit to simulate autonomous performance. Blockchain-based smart contracts and documentary credit share three core functionalities which are essential to any effective autonomous performance, analogue or digital—they both (i) act through internalized media of exchange; (ii) operate as closed systems; and (iii) provide means of securing sufficient resources to guarantee contractual performance. Using these three functionalities as a framework, this chapter conducts a comparative analysis of mechanisms for effecting autonomous contractual performance in a commercial setting. From this comparison, a few hypotheses are drawn regarding the potential areas where smart contract technology is more likely to find fruitful application. In particular, the chapter considers potential limitations to applying smart contracts to scenarios beyond digital asset transfers, how dispute resolution mechanisms should be designed to complement (rather impair) the autonomous nature of contractual performance under smart contracts, and potential capital cost implications which might arise in some cases when parties seek to replace human intermediaries with smart contracts.

Philipp Paech

The practice of securities holding, transfer, and collateral has changed significantly over the past 200 years—moving from paper certificates and issuer registers, to an intermediated environment, and from there to computerization and globalization. These changes have made transacting more efficient and thus rendered markets more liquid. However, the law has lagged behind and is now itself an obstacle to efficiency because international securities transactions are subject to considerable legal uncertainty. The latest global market development, a cryptographic transfer process commonly called the blockchain, is the most recent efficiency-enhancing change. It offers a unique possibility to create a consistent legal framework for securities from scratch, on the basis of a legal concept that, to some extent, resembles bearer securities. This article shows what the new international legal framework could look like in the light of experience gained from earlier developments.

Siddharth Misra, Vishal Kashyap, Poonacha K.B., Arjun Mukund · 5 authors

Tema ovog rada su kriptovalute. Budući da većina ljudi nije pravodobno upoznata s ovom temom, ovaj rad prikazuje i opisuje kriptovalute te način na koji se upotrjebljuju u svakodnevnom životu. Kriptovalute (eng. cryptocurrency) digitalne su valute dizajnirane kao sredstvo razmjene. Poznate su po tome što su državne agencije i banke isključene iz procesa razmjene. Kriptovalute omogućuju jednostavnu, jeftinu i brzu transakciju na području cijeloga svijeta. Trenutno najisplativije kriptovalute su Bitcoin i Ethereum, a u radu je opisana njihova korisnost, prednosti i mane. Budući da se Bitcoinu predviđa uspješna budućnost i sve je prisutniji i prihvatljiviji na tržištu, u radu su navedeni primjeri iz Hrvatske koji to potvrđuju. Sve veći broj poduzetnika odlučuje se za uvođenje kriptovaluta. U primjerima je obuhvaćen širok spektar djelatnosti, od frizerskih usluga, preko raznih tvrtki koji se bave prodajom računalne opreme, ugostiteljskih usluga preko mogućnosti brzog i lakog podizana gotovine na kripto bankomatima pa sve do plaćanja komunalnih usluga, pa čak i humanitarno djelovanje. Mnogi smatraju da su kriptovalute samo sinonim za prijevare i pranje novca, no programeri tvrde da su kriptovalute samo jedna vrsta tehnologije, alat koji sam po sebi ne može biti ni dobar ni loš, ovisno o tome za što se koristi. Autor ovoga rada proveo je istraživanje o tome kako se može besplatno započeti trgovanje kriptovalutama te je anketom ispitao stavove ispitanika o implementaciji kriptovaluta u društvu.

Philipp Paech

Abstract Since the emergence of the virtual currency Bitcoin in 2009, a new, Internet‐based way of recording entitlements and enforcing rights has increasingly captured the interest of businesses and governments. The technology is commonly called ‘blockchain’ and is often associated with a closely related phenomenon, the ‘smart contract’. The market is now exploring ways of using these concepts for financial assets, such as securities, fiat money and derivative contracts. This article develops a conceptual framework for the governance of blockchain‐based networks in financial markets. It constructs a vision of how financial regulation and private law should set the boundaries of this new technology in order to protect market participants and societies at large, while at the same time allowing the necessary room for innovation.

Yutaka Suzuki

This paper uses a contract theory framework to analyze the mechanisms of eurozone financial governance, with a focus on centralization vs. decentralization and incentive problems. By constructing a Stackelberg game model with n Ministries of Finance as the first movers and the European Central Bank as the second mover, we show that each government can create growth in its own country (self-benefit) by increasing government spending, but that this will increase inflation, resulting in a decrease in the value of the euro. As these effects are shared equally by eurozone countries (cost sharing), an incentive to free-ride at the expense of other countries is present. We then analyze a penalty-based solution to the free-rider problem and derive a second-best solution where a commitment not to renegotiate penalties ex-post is impossible. The optimal solution shows that ¡°limited sovereignty, ¡± that is, substantially constrained fiscal sovereignty, should be imposed as a high marginal cost for the issuance of public debt. Finally, we close the paper by discussing the possibility of Fiscal Integration (Fiscal Union).

Chris Berg, Sinclair Davidson, Jason Potts

Are there differences between the sale of an unopened Super Mario Bros. computer game and of the digital collage of 5,000 images? Viewed from the perspective of the doctrine of exhaustion, we can easily conclude that the two transfers have significant differences. The auction of the tangible data carrier of the Super Mario’s 1986 edition (for $660,000) 1 fits well into the doctrine. The auction of the NFT (non-fungible token) representing Beeple’s “Everdays: the First 5000 Days” (for an equivalent of an astounding $69.3 million) 2 seems to be hype with a snowball effect rather than a modern encapsulation of digital exhaustion. Some commentators, 3 including the present author in collaboration with Alexandra Giannapoulou, João Pedro Quintais, and Balázs Bodó, 4 have thoroughly introduced the incompatibility of the NFT mania with the existing copyright status quo, and so – in connection with the present book’s topic – the sale of tokenized information, which is capable of representing information related to digital artworks, is practically excluded from the scope of the exhaustion of the right of distribution. At the same time, NFTs de facto offer a “code-based digital ecosystem that has practical consequences for the copyright-relevant fields of creativeness.” 5 The sale and resale of NFTs is possible; an exchange of information and title to “own” and “trade” information related to copyrightable subject matter is technologically guaranteed. In line with that, a quasi-exhaustion regime has also emerged. As such, the NFT mania can practically evidence the need for and modern technology’s capability of offering digital marketplaces for artworks as well.