Modern antitrust and competition law relies extensively on the firm as defined by Ronald Coase: a hierarchy reducing transaction costs thanks to vertical control, where such control defines the firm's boundaries. Meanwhile, the governance of public permissionless blockchains is horizontal....

Western legal systems have historically helped establish trust between parties and reduce transactional uncertainty by providing recourse to legal procedures. Nonetheless, establishing trust still imposes significant transactional costs and blockchain may reduce them to a smaller level. In the...

Blockchain may transform transactions the same way the Internet altered the dissemination and nature of information. If that were to be the case, all relationships between companies would change, including prohibited ones such as collusive agreements. For that reason, the stakes are crucial and...

Imagine a space in which the Rule of Law does not have the same prevalence it has in the real space. Imagine a space where fundamental rights are created and enforced by the technology, a space in which your rights are absolute, meaning that you enjoy no limits on them in exchange for not being...

Contents: Preface -- Introduction: The decentralization -- Part 1 a common ambition -- 1. Blockchain: From ideology to implementation -- 2. Blockchain's toolbox -- 3. Blockchain and darwin -- 4. Decentralization? -- 5. Comes antitrust: The paradox -- Part 2 best frenemies? -- 6. The theory of...

In this article, the authors show that blockchain can help in reaching the goals of antitrust law in situations where the rule of law does not (fully) apply. They detail what needs to be done to this end, from both a technical and legal standpoint

Mark Zuckerberg introduced Libra to the world in June 2019 with the goal of “enabl[ing] a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people.” Two months after, and without waiting for the project to be launched, the European Commission sent a questionnaire...

Innovation plays a crucial role in defining competitive dynamics. Given this fact, one might expect ‘innovation’ to play a consistent role in antitrust law. The present article conducts a systematic content analysis of the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union to test this...