Confronting Cryptomania

The concept of a blockchain was pioneered by Satoshi Nakamoto in his white paper on Bitcoin in 2008, igniting cryptomania by 2013. Despite growing skepticism, blockchain technology continues to be proposed for use in a wide range of activities implicating the law ranging from inter-bank transfers to land registries. The myth of perfect or near perfect security that surrounded early euphoria over the blockchain has transitioned to an invidious fable of improved security. Although many of the risks associated with blockchains are thought to be well-known, a deeper understanding of the role of cryptography underlying the technology is necessary to explode the fiction, which is invidious precisely because of its apparent plausibility. This paper also examines the often overlooked implications of blockchain registries to traditional judicial remedies. Most obviously, rectification is effectively neutered but blockchain registries will also blunt other judicial remedies such as specific performance in relation to assets so recorded. Even litigation unrelated to blockchain assets will be implicated so long as they are required to be seized to satisfy a judgment debt. This paper will thus also attempt to examine how the courts may respond to the inadvertent and unplanned arms reduction within the judicial armoury. Might the courts’ response lie in equity’s ancient jurisdiction in personam, in which orders are made directly against the defendant’s person and compliance assured through judicial coercion? The extent to which equity’s ancient in personam jurisdiction can ameliorate any inadvertent dulling of the judicial armoury will be considered as well as the limitations of this jurisdiction