The law of cross-border insolvency is about where a company is. It has never had to ask legally what is being administered where an estate consists of cryptographic keys rather than factories or what happens when the controlling minds of a debtor are as mobile as the assets they control. In this paper, I argue that the recent cross-border insolvency reform in India, advanced by section 240C of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Act, 2026 (an enabling provision, whose substantive rules remain undrafted), will fail a meaningful share of the insolvencies it is meant to resolve, unless those rules are built with digital assets affirmatively in mind.The argument proceeds in three movements. First, it traces the doctrine of "centre of main interests" through its foundational European and American case law, showing a registered-office presumption that holds up well against debtors who are not trying to defeat it, and considerably less well against those who are. Second, it compares how courts in New Zealand, the United States, and Japan have answered materially the same question, whether a depositor's cryptocurrency is trust property, contractually transferred estate property, or no property at all, and reached three different answers in insolvencies with nearly identical facts. Third, it reads recent failures, including the Indian exchange WazirX's restructuring before a foreign court with no domestic mechanism for India to participate, as variations on one structural pattern that neither doctrine was built to handle.The paper conclude by proposing some concrete provisions which we would suggest that the Central Government consider as it moves forward with the process of notifying the remaining rules under section 240C – specifically, these include a legislated default regime relating to customer deposits, a COMI presumption in relation to debtors who have no other registered office, and a mechanism which enables India to be heard if a foreign restructuring results in large numbers of Indian citizens being affected.
The present research explores how blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies challenge the traditional continental civil law framework. By reassessing the legal taxonomy of digital assets, the paper argues against their strict classification as jura in personam, primarily due to the absence of a designated debtor in permissionless networks. Alternatively, it supports the recognition of a sui-generis real right (jus in re) grounded in the concept of ‘cryptographic possession’. Furthermore, classical civil classifications are reinterpreted to address the ubiquitous nature of digital assets and the inherent complexities of jurisdictional localization. The study highlights the legal distinction between fungible cryptocurrencies and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), alongside the emerging fructiferous character of assets deployed within Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ecosystems, which generate civil fruits. To contextualize these shifts, three European regulatory paradigms are evaluated: the French dualist approach under the PACTE Law, the German institutional integration into the banking sector, and the Swiss DLT framework, which innovatively merges substantive rights with digital tokens. Finally, the analysis focuses on the practical implications for the pathology of legal relations, particularly regarding the efficacy of forced execution and the safeguarding of the creditors' general pledge. The paper concludes with targeted de lege ferenda proposals for the Romanian legal system. These include the express statutory recognition of digital assets as intangible movable property in the Civil Code, alongside modern civil procedure mechanisms, such as the judicially mandated surrender of private keys under penalty and automated electronic garnishment, aimed at harmonizing state coercive power with the realities of the Web 3.0 economy.
Blockchain technology records transactions on a distributed ledger that is cryptographically chained, replicated across independent nodes, and validated by consensus rather than by any single institution. Because the technology verifies that recorded transactions occurred and have not been altered, some commentators have concluded that it will make external auditors redundant. This article rejects that conclusion but takes the underlying disruption seriously. It argues that blockchain automates a narrow and historically labor-intensive slice of the audit, namely the verification of the existence, occurrence, and mathematical accuracy of recorded transactions, while leaving untouched the components of assurance that depend on professional judgment: valuation, accounting estimates, classification, completeness of off-chain events, related party identification, and going concern assessment. At the same time, the technology creates new objects that require assurance, including consensus protocols, cryptographic key management, smart contract code, and the oracles that connect ledgers to the physical world. The article examines the consequences for auditing standards, particularly the treatment of blockchain records as audit evidence, and for the education, skills, and business model of the profession. The external auditor’s future role, it concludes, lies not in verifying transactions but in assuring the systems that now verify them, and in exercising the judgment that no ledger can encode.
Nydia REMOLINA LEON, Aurelio GURREA-MARTINEZ, Daniel LIU
This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the treatment of digital assets in insolvency. Given that cryptoassets can be the subject of various transactions—including purchase, sale, custody, and lending—understanding their nature and implications in insolvency is relevant for any firm, not just cryptoexchanges. The article begins by offering a general overview of the world of cryptoassets. It then examines the nature of cryptoassets from accounting, financial, and legal perspectives. While much of the literature on insolvency and cryptoassets has primarily focused on the analysis of whether cryptocurrencies constitute property of the estate, this article explores additional issues, such as the treatment, role and rights of tokenholders in insolvency, the initiation of insolvency proceedings by cryptolenders, and the valuation, recovery, and realization of digital assets in bankruptcy. Such analysis is conducted from a comparative perspective, examining how jurisdictions around the world have addressed some of those issues and how cryptoassets have been used to engineer innovative solutions in restructuring agreements.
ABSTRACT The emergence of decentralized compute-sharing protocols—peer-to-peer GPU and specialized-hardware marketplaces enabling firms to provision machine learning training and inference capacity without direct capital expenditure or on-balance-sheet lease recognition—has introduced a structurally novel form of operational leverage that conventional credit analysis is ill-equipped to detect. This paper investigates whether such off-balance-sheet utilization systematically distorts a firm's True Free Cash Flow to Firm (FCFF), defined here as reported FCFF adjusted for the capitalized economic equivalent of decentralized compute obligations, and quantifies the implicit tail-risk premium that credit default swap (CDS) markets demand for this hidden leverage. We formalize the problem in three stages. First, we construct a Hidden Leverage Ratio (HLR) by reconstructing the present value of a firm's implicit compute-sharing commitments from on-chain settlement data, smart-contract escrow balances, and protocol-level utilization telemetry, applying an exposure-graph methodology to map indirect exposure routed through special-purpose vehicles (SPVs) and protocol intermediary nodes. Second, we develop a structural credit risk model extending the classical Merton framework with a compound jump-diffusion component calibrated to compute-price volatility, in which hidden leverage enters the firm's effective asset volatility and default boundary as an unobserved but inferable state variable, generating a model-implied default probability and credit spread. Third, we empirically estimate the market-implied tail-risk premium by regressing observed 5-year CDS spreads against the constructed HLR across a panel of 412 firm-quarters drawn from technology, fintech, and AI-infrastructure issuers with active CDS markets, controlling for conventional leverage, profitability, and macro-credit factors. We find that CDS markets demand a statistically and economically significant tail-risk premium for hidden compute leverage: a one-standard-deviation increase in HLR is associated with a 61–142 basis point widening in 5-year CDS spreads depending on cohort, an effect that persists after controlling for reported leverage ratios, implying that CDS markets partially but incompletely price this off-balance-sheet exposure ahead of formal disclosure. The structural model achieves an R² of 0.87 against observed CDS spreads and reveals a convex, threshold-like premium structure consistent with jump-risk pricing rather than continuous Merton-style diffusion risk alone. We critically examine the limits of on-chain data observability, the endogeneity risk in inferring "true" cash flow from a credit-market-implied proxy, the accounting standard-setting implications for emerging digital lease constructs, and the systemic stability concerns raised by undisclosed, correlated compute leverage across the AI infrastructure sector. This work establishes a rigorous, empirically grounded framework at the convergence of decentralized finance infrastructure, structural credit risk theory, and corporate financial reporting.
Abstract -This paper introduces and develops Neutral Value Movement (NVM) — a conceptual and operational framework in which the economic value of a financial instrument is deliberately decoupled from any single settlement rail, network, or ledger technology. Under an NVM posture, the identity, legal standing, and economic attributes of a financial claim are treated as properties of the instrument itself, not of the infrastructure through which it happens to be held or transferred at any given moment. The imperative for such a framework arises from the simultaneous coexistence of legacy central securities depository infrastructure (DTCC, Euroclear, Clearstream), permissioned distributed ledger platforms (JPMorgan Kinexys, Broadridge DLR, Canton Network), emerging public chain deployments (Ethereum Layer 2 networks), and conventional payment rails (Fedwire, SWIFT). In this fragmented landscape, the settlement of a cross-rail transaction today requires bespoke, bilateral engineering — an approach that scales neither operationally nor legally. This paper makes four principal contributions: (1) a rigorous definition of rail-agnostic settlement and its distinction from interoperability; (2) the concept of cross-chain equivalence and the Equivalence Certificate as a legal-technical construct; (3) the Canonical Digital Artifact as the foundational representational standard for multi-rail financial instruments; and (4) a Multi-Rail Governance Stack with
Abstract : Global payment platforms have grown into extraordinarily complex financial ecosystems, ones that touch dozens of legal entities, hundreds of currency pairs, and numerous regulatory perimeters, often within the lifecycle of a single transaction. This technical review examines how multi-entity ledger architectures can be designed to meet that complexity, with particular focus on customer liability management, payables and receivables tracking, revenue recognition, transaction cost monitoring, loss accounting, and cash management reconciliation. Beyond structural design, the review explores how embedded control frameworks, self-healing exception pipelines, and trend-based anomaly detection can meaningfully reduce operational overhead while improving financial accuracy. Practical diagnostic examples are included, including how a rising transaction cost ratio can signal that an external processor has silently risk-flagged a merchant's traffic due to missing critical data fields. Visual dashboards and architecture diagrams support these concepts throughout. The article uses peer-reviewed and practitioner literature from the fields of fintech, distributed systems, and financial governance
This paper provides the rigorous engineering specification for the Ternary Logic (TL) Smart Contract Execution Layer, defining deterministic rules for all state transitions within the constitutional triadic model: Proceed (+1), Epistemic Hold (0), and Refuse (1). The Epistemic Hold is specified as the fail-closed default state, returned by TL_Evidence_Vault.getTransactionState() for any transaction whose evidence has not yet been archived, making uncertainty constitutionally visible rather than operationally invisible. The specification defines three forbidden transitions: Epistemic Hold to Epistemic Hold re-resolution, direct Refuse to Proceed, and direct Proceed to Refuse. Resolution of the Epistemic Hold to either Proceed or Refuse requires Stewardship Custodian quorum attestation of nine of eleven members. The Dual-Lane Latency Architecture is specified with a 2ms WCET hard ceiling at the 99.99th percentile for the Inference Lane and a 300ms hard ceiling with 50ms jitter maximum for the Governance Lane. The No Log = No Action invariant is enforced across five independent layers culminating in the on-chain terminal gate at TL_Ledger_Core.registerPermissionToken, which reverts NLNAViolation if the logHash is not provably included in an anchored Merkle root. The Smart Contract Treasury fee architecture is defined as governance parameters labeled Nomination 2026, establishing permissionTokenFee and archiveEvidenceFee as Tri-Cameral Joint-Approval variables rather than hardcoded constants. The Epistemic Hold carries no fee by constitutional design. The specification includes the Triple-Entry Accounting model extending traditional double-entry with a third cryptographically secured entry recording justification and context, Role-Based Access Control implementation patterns, the complete use case library spanning financial services, sustainable finance, supply chain, and decentralized governance, and a full Glossary of Terms establishing the canonical V2.0 vocabulary of the TL framework.
The burgeoning proliferation of digital assets (cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens, stablecoins and other forms of financial instruments, which exist on a blockchain) has revealed deep flaws in established insolvency frameworks around the world. This article considers the three inseparable legal issues of the legal characterization of digital assets as 'property', 'valuation' of volatile digital assets during insolvency and 'recovery' of such assets in an era of borderless technology. It uses the jurisdictions of Singapore and India as models in an effort to show that Singapore's forward-looking legislative framework-supported by the Payment Services Act 2019, the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act 2018 and a robust case law framework-offers a robust and informative blueprint for states seeking to revise their insolvency frameworks. Despite being home to more than 115 million digital asset users and a large domestic market, India lacks legislative provisions to deal with digital asset insolvency. Finally, this article offers specific suggestions for the amendment of India's Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016, trans-border insolvency regimes and the regulatory framework applied to digital asset service providers.
Traditional finance developed the XVA framework — encompassing Credit Valuation Adjustment (CVA), Funding Valuation Adjustment (FVA), Margin Valuation Adjustment (MVA), and related components — in direct response to the systemic failures exposed by the 2008 financial crisis. The framework's central insight is that derivatives cannot be priced in isolation from the costs imposed by counterparty default risk, collateral funding, and regulatory capital. These adjustments are now standard practice at every major financial institution. 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 through a framework of nine distinct adjustment categories organized in three tiers: Protocol-Level (SCVA, OVA, LRVA, BRVA, GVA), Asset-Level (SVA, TVLVA, LCVA), and Cross-Protocol / Network-Level, introduced in this revision through the Composability Valuation Adjustment (CompVA) — the fair-value reserve for propagation risk invisible to protocol- and asset-level adjustments, and the dominant loss channel in the April 18–19, 2026 Aave / Kelp DAO / LayerZero cascade, in which a bridge exploit at one protocol produced multi-billion-dollar TVL impact at uncompromised peer protocols. The framework is explicitly oriented to the fair-value-measurement regime — ASC 820 in the United States and IFRS 13 under IFRS — and is positioned alongside the presently divergent capital-adequacy regimes: the Basel Committee's Working Paper 44 and SCO60, which charge higher capital for permissionless infrastructure, and the March 2026 OCC / Federal Reserve / FDIC interagency FAQs, which adopt a technology-neutral capital rule. Both frameworks address capital adequacy; neither addresses measurement. Crypto XVA provides the missing measurement architecture, in which jurisdictional regulatory divergence itself enters fair value as a priced input through LCVA and the Tier III network correlations. The paper also examines what we term the Smart Contract XVA Paradox: prior claims that smart contracts eliminate counterparty risk are technically accurate but misleading. The correct statement is that DeFi transforms counterparty risk into smart contract risk; the net effect on total valuation adjustment depends on protocol-specific characteristics and cannot be assumed directionally. Because oracle parameters in DeFi are endogenous and programmable, Crypto XVA operates not only as a measurement architecture but as a control framework for protocol governance.
Type of the article: Research ArticleAbstractShareholder voting in conventional corporate governance remains constrained by intermediated proxy systems, information asymmetries, and limited transparency. This study aims to systematically synthesize recent scholarly, legal, and policy literature to evaluate whether, and under what legal and institutional conditions, blockchain-based voting and decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) architectures can enhance shareholder democracy through hybrid “code-plus-law” governance models. Adopting an interdisciplinary qualitative design, the paper combines a systematic literature review with doctrinal legal analysis, drawing on a broad corpus of recent scholarly, legal, and policy sources published from 2020 through 2025. Evidence is synthesized into six structured comparative tables covering voting auditability, shareholder participation, token concentration, legal recognition, DAO design features, and hybrid “code-plus-law” governance models. The review highlights consistent improvements in three core dimensions compared to legacy proxy systems: enhanced auditability and end-to-end verifiability, speedier aggregation of voting outcomes, and broader feasibility of cross-border shareholder participation. Simultaneously, four risks keep appearing: token concentration (“whale dominance”), technical and governance scalability limits, unequal digital literacy and access, and persistent gaps in the legal recognition and enforceability of DAOs. Overall, the findings suggest that hybrid arrangements that combine blockchain-based transparency and efficiency with conventional legal safeguards are more apt to provide for inclusive participation and durable legitimacy than purely code-based or purely traditional governance models.
Decentralised finance (DeFi) has profoundly reshaped global capital markets, enabling automatic transactions, eliminating the need for intermediaries, and accelerating transaction settlement times. Despite these significant advancements, institutional involvement in DeFi remains very low. The lack of institutional participation can be attributed to the lack of an enforceable compliance mechanism at the protocol level; that is, once a transaction is confirmed as having been completed on the blockchain, it cannot be undone or disputed in any meaningful way. The existing compliance mechanisms are primarily retrospective, meaning that they generate alerts after a transaction has occurred instead of preventing illicit transfers in advance. Regulated financial institutions that transact in cryptocurrency bear the ultimate financial risk and regulatory burden. The UK FCA has made it very clear through CP25/41 that there are now specific regulatory expectations regarding the existence of adequate pre-settlement controls [2]. We introduce AMTTP Version 4.0, which has been designed to have a four-layer architecture explicitly intended to support deterministic compliance enforcement in DeFi institutions. Layer I provides SDKs, REST APIs, and web applications intended for programmatic and human interaction with AMTTP; Layer II provides a compliance orchestration layer that combines (i) machine learning risk scoring (ii) graph analysis (iii) sanctions screening, and (iv) policy adjudication into a single deterministic decision-making matrix; Layer III consists of an offline training pipeline with a Composite Teacher that uses an AutoencoderEnhanced XGBoost (w = 0.4), seven FATF AML Mode Patterns (w = 0.3), and graph structural properties (w = 0.3) in order to produce pseudo-labels (SLPs) for the Student pipeline across 2,640,000 transactions; and finally, Layer IV supports the physical infrastructure for AMTTP deployment, which consists of 18 smart contracts on Ethereum Sepolia, 17 containerised microservices, and a Database Persistence Tier (MongoDB, Redis, Memgraph, IPFS). The Infrastructure Security features multioracle threshold signatures, replay protection & zkNAF a zeroknowledge proof framework that allows for privacy preserving verification of KYC credentials, risk ranges & non-membership from sanctions. In addition, TLS Encryption, Rate Limiting, Cloudflare Tunnel integration & the UI Integrity Service provide an additional layer of protection at the infrastructure level. This paper aims to demonstrate that deterministic compliance can be integrated into decentralised finance at an architectural level. In order to support this assertion, the client SDKs (TypeScript and Python) are released as open source.1
Abstract This article examines the creation, perfection, and enforcement of security interests in digital assets—such as cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens, and tokenized securities—under Korean law, and compares Korea’s legal framework with those of other major jurisdictions. Despite South Korea’s prominence as a cryptocurrency market and technological hub, existing Korean statutes do not expressly recognize digital assets as objects of property rights or collateral. Consequently, market participants must rely on legal analogies, such as pledging contractual claims against custodians or transferring title outright, creating significant uncertainty. This article undertakes a doctrinal analysis of Korean law, judicial precedents (most notably, the 2018 Korean Supreme Court ruling confirming that digital assets have property-like economic value), and scholarly sources. It also surveys comparative legal developments, including the USA’s creation of ‘controllable electronic records’ under its Uniform Commercial Code amendments, Japan’s workaround of pledging claims against custodians, the United Kingdom’s Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025, which confirms crypto-tokens as a new form of personal property, Germany’s Electronic Securities Act for dematerialized securities, and Switzerland’s Distributed Ledger Technology Act for ledger-based rights. In each jurisdiction, legislators and courts increasingly acknowledge ‘control’ of digital assets—a framework akin to possession of tangible property—as the functional basis for perfecting and prioritizing security interests (Unidroit Principles on Digital Assets and Private Law). This article concludes by proposing legislative reforms for South Korea, including: (i) explicit recognition of digital assets as property; (ii) adopting ‘control’ as a method of perfection with corresponding priority rules; (iii) expanding the Movables Security registry to accommodate digital assets; and (iv) clarifying enforcement procedures, particularly in insolvency contexts. These steps would harmonise South Korea’s secured transactions framework with global best practices, reduce legal uncertainty, and enhance the accessibility of credit secured by digital assets in a rapidly evolving financial environment.
탈중앙화 금융(DeFi)·탈중앙화 자율조직(DAO)의 확산으로 책임 주체를 식별 가능한 조직이 전제인 전통적 규제체계에 발생하는 규제 공백에 대응하여 미국 연방지방법원은 DAO의 단체법적 지위와 책임 구조에 대한 법리를 제시하고 있다. 상품선물거래위원회(CFTC) v. Ooki DAO 사건에서 CFTC는 DAO를 캘리포니아 회사법의 비법인사단(unincorporated association)·상품거래법의 인격체(person)로 특정하여 소송 능력을 주장하였고, 캘리포니아 북부지방법원은 대체 송달·소송 능력을 인정하여 금지명령(injunctions) 등을 부과하였다. Sarcuni v. bZx DAO 사건에서 원고는 해킹으로 인한 이용자의 재산 손실 관련 DAO의 거버넌스·거래지원 추진·마케팅·수익 활동에 적극 관여한 설립자·개발자·벤처 캐피탈(VC)(‘핵심 이용자’) 등에 과실(negligence)을 원인으로 손해배상을 청구하였다. 캘리포니아 남부지방법원은 핵심 이용자 일부에 캘리포니아 회사법의 일반조합(general partnership) 성립과 조합원(partner) 지위의 개연성을 인정하여 조합원 공동·연대책임(joint and several liability)을 전제로 책임 구조를 검토하였다. Samuels v. Lido DAO 사건·Houghton v. Leshner 사건에서 캘리포니아 북부지방법원은 핵심 이용자 등에 증권법 §12(a)(1) 법정 판매자(statutory seller) 성립과 조합원 공동·연대책임의 개연성을 시사하였다. 이는 규제 공백을 해소하는 장점이 존재하지만, 조합원 범위의 모호성과 공동·연대책임이 생태계 위축을 초래할 위험성도 우려된다.<br/> 우리나라도 DAO의 단체법적 지위와 책임 구조를 시급하게 논의하여야 한다. ① 공동 목적·규칙·거버넌스·트레저리·지배 구조 기반 단체 DAO에 조합·비법인사단·회사 등 전통적 단체법을 적용하여 단체법적 지위와 책임 구조를 판단하여야 한다. ② DAO 토큰은 순수 유틸리티형 토큰·거버넌스 토큰·지분형 토큰 등 권리 구조와 실질적 지배·통제 권한에 근거하여 가상자산사업자 규율을 적용할 필요가 있다. ③ 중장기적으로 DAO 특례 입법을 통해 등록 DAO에 구성원 유한책임을 인정하고, 미등록 DAO에 불리한 추론을 적용하며, 법무법인·회계법인·VC·가상자산거래소 등 게이트키퍼 책임 모델을 설계하여 이용자 보호를 도모하여야 한다. ④ 발행인·판매자·서비스 제공자를 실질적 영향력과 이익 귀속을 기준으로 특정하고, 핵심 이용자 등을 책임 주체로 식별하며, 토큰 소량 보유자·수동적 이용자는 면책하는 등 책임 범위의 정교화가 요구된다.
Abstract Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) can replicate certain features of the modern business corporation—notably a crypto-asset “capital lock-in” and participatory governance based on token-holder “democracy.” The history of corporations can be traced back to Roman law and beyond. However, with increasing industrialization, the nineteenth century was to become the century of free and general incorporation, leaving behind the restrictive charter system. Rampant abuse and speculation as well as widespread fraud and corruption at the beginning did not prevent limited liability corporations from being hailed as “the greatest single discovery of modern times” only a generation later. This chapter seeks to ascertain whether and to what extent the history of corporate law can provide valuable lessons for the design and implementation of adequate legal frameworks for capturing the DAO phenomenon. It argues for an incremental approach that gradually seeks to accommodate the concept of DAOs within existing legal frameworks. This will more readily allow for fostering innovation whilst curbing the propensity for abuse.
Abstract Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) offer the promise of enabling an enterprise to combine a democratic member-run governance system with the efficiency and predictability of automation. DAOs challenge traditional conventions about corporate governance in several ways. By enabling enterprises to craft customized governance structures, they challenge the ability of participants to understand and price businesses that employ novel governance features. By broadening the potential scope of who can participate in governance systems, DAOs respond to an emerging debate over stakeholder governance. They also raise important issues about accountability and the extent to which a decentralized governance structure in which individual decision-makers are not constrained by fiduciary principles can effectively limit conflicts of interest and self-dealing. This chapter considers these features of DAO corporate governance. It embraces the potential offered by the DAO structure to rethink traditional corporate governance norms and highlights the implications of the governance choices made by DAOs.
Kara J. Bruce, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato
Abstract The enormous diversity in decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) ownership structures, governance models, and operational processes yields a spectrum of potential outcomes when DAOs meet bankruptcy. US bankruptcy law offers distressed businesses orderly rehabilitation or liquidation options but assumes conventional management and debtor–creditor frameworks. DAOs that are open to more traditional corporate-style operating structures may be able to access the bankruptcy system with some creativity and compromise. Conversely, DAOs that implement highly decentralized and automated governance models may find themselves unable to access or navigate the bankruptcy system voluntarily. This is due to bankruptcy’s heavily centralized and court-supervised process, which stands in tension with core DAO ideals. For such DAOs, bankruptcy might not be avoidable if their stakeholders commence involuntary proceedings. As decentralized models proliferate, understanding bankruptcy law’s application to DAOs is crucial for developing robust legal frameworks and policy responses to govern the rapidly evolving digital asset economy.
Over the past two years, Hong Kong hasn’t just talked about Web3 transformation — it has executed it. A sequenced rollout of real policies. A clear regulatory masterplan. A vision anchored in innovation and investor protection. Today, Hong Kong is emerging as one of the world’s most credible and forward-looking regulated digital asset hubs. In my latest article, I break down how the SFC’s A-S-P-I-Re Roadmap, new licensing frameworks, custody standards, staking regulations, and tokenisation initiatives are reshaping the entire virtual asset landscape across 2024–2025. This is not just regulatory evolution — it’s regulatory engineering. 🔍 Inside the article: • The real meaning of “same activity, same risk, same regulation” • How reforms are raising the bar for VATPs and market integrity • Why Hong Kong’s digital asset roadmap is now a global reference point • The rise of institutional-grade custody + cybersecurity requirements • The strategic push behind Project Ensemble and tokenised finance • How collaboration between the SFC, HKMA, and industry is driving safe innovation Hong Kong’s approach shows that a digital asset market can be innovative, resilient, and globally aligned — all at once.
1 Cryptocurrencies in Insolvency Proceedings Abstract The thesis explores how crypto-assets are situated within Czech insolvency law and examines how their technological properties interact with established institutions of bankruptcy proceedings. It starts from a practical observation: distributed-ledger-based assets appear in debtors' estates with growing frequency and in diverse roles-as means of exchange, as investment items, as collateral, or as parts of operational processes. This development raises new questions concerning legal characterisation, discovery and tracing, procedural securing, safe administration, and the choice of realisation methods for the benefit of creditors. The aim is to map these questions systematically, provide a clear vocabulary, and outline a working framework that enables decision-makers to act predictably while respecting efficiency, transparency, and equal treatment of creditors. The opening chapter recalls the foundational principles of Czech insolvency law and the roles of the main actors, with particular attention to the trustee's duties and the supervisory function of creditors' bodies. A concise technical primer then explains how crypto-assets function: the role of private keys and addresses, the nature of on-chain transactions, distinctions between custodial and...