J. D. C. Vergara, D. E. Burdin, R.H. Davletbaev, Π. Π. Π. ΠΠ΅ΡΠ³Π°ΡΠ° Β· 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. Weβll 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.
Marina Migunova, Sofya A. Nazarenko, Anzhelina A. Zakharova, Dmitry M. Grechnev Β· 5 authors
In the context of digitalization of world trade, the task of effective foreign economic administration is becoming more and more urgent. The purpose of the article is to analyze the application of blockchain smart contracts in foreign economic activity. The evolution of the concept, advantages (automation, transparency, savings) and disadvantages, as well as legal limitations, including the lack of international regulation (using the example of BRICS), are considered. The conclusion is made: the introduction of smart contracts optimizes foreign economic activity, but requires a transformation of legislation and the harmonization of international standards.
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 β 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 β 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.
The article examines the role of distributed ledger (blockchain) technologies as a key institutional factor in the transformation of the digital financial services system in the context of the structural restructuring of the financial sector and the strengthening of requirements for transparency, security and efficiency of settlements. The systemic effects of the introduction of blockchain technologies are highlighted, which determine the reduction of transaction costs, acceleration of settlements, increased trust between counterparties and the formation of new models for organizing financial relations. The impact of distributed registries on changes in coordination mechanisms in the financial system, transformation of traditional mediation institutions and redistribution of roles between financial market participants is disclosed. Particular attention is paid to the limitations and risks of implementing distributed registries associated with institutional inertia, shortage of qualified personnel and difficulties in integrating with existing information systems. The author shows the key focus of the factor of increasing the efficiency of digital financial services and the sustainable development of the financial system in blockchain technology, with appropriate institutional, legal and investment support.
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 article examines the potential of blockchain technology and the digital ruble for optimizing public procurement in the education sector. The existing problems of the public procurement system in Russian educational institutions are analyzed, including lack of transparency in spending, bureaucratic costs, and corruption risks. The mechanism of digital ruble smart contracts is investigated as a tool for labeling and automatic control of targeted budget expenditures. International experience in applying blockchain technologies in public procurement is reviewed. The analysis of opportunities for educational startups integrating distributed ledger solutions into the management of educational institutions is conducted. Practical recommendations for implementing the digital ruble in budget settlements of the education sector are formulated.