On December 1, 2017, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and the CBOE Futures Exchange self-certified new contracts for cash-settled bitcoin futures products. The self-certification process allows designated contract markets to list new derivative products one day after submitting in writing to...

On October 25, 2021, the Federal Government of Nigeria through the Central Bank of Nigeria (“CBN”) launched a digital currency, eNaira, which is a digital form of its fiat currency, Naira. By the launch of the eNaira, Nigeria joined the league of other nations like Bahamas and China that...

This article summarizes some of the key points raised at a conference convened at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law on March 3, 2016. The conference brought together luminaries from government, private practice, the marketplace, and the academy to discuss the phenomenon that is Bitcoin and its...

The need for a legal framework that explains a decentralized system is compulsory to understand whether regulation could be useful and effective. Previous academic frameworks did not manage to explain the intimate development and success of a decentralized cryptocurrency system interpreting the...

Bitcoin is the oldest and most widely established cryptocurrency network with the highest market capitalization among all cryptocurrencies. Although bitcoin (with lowercase b) is increasingly viewed as a digital asset belonging to a new asset class, the Bitcoin network (with uppercase B) is a...

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...

Bitcoin is a distributed system. The greatest dilemma it poses to the current legal and regulatory systems is that it is hardly possible to regulate a distributed network in a centralized fashion as decentralized permissionless blockchain-based cryptocurrencies are antithetical to the existing...

Cryptocurrency is a digitally created financial asset, used as a medium of exchange without any authority of bank, with no physical structure and legal tender someway giving disrespect to sovereign boundaries and authorities in absence of specific regulatory structure. Bitcoin is the first...

The financial assets that are subject to major European financial legislation (i.e. (designated types of) financial instruments) have traditionally been defined in a largely exemplary and circular manner. The recent proliferation of ‘non-traditional' financial assets, such as cryptocurrencies...

Blockchain, or “distributed ledger” technology, has been devised as an alternative to the law of finance. While it has become clear by now that regulation in the public interest is necessary, for example to avoid money laundering, drug dealing or tax evasion, the particularly thorny issues...