The lack of control by a single authority is an oft-described characteristic of blockchain technology. This article shows the extent to which US and EU copyright law protects information stored on a blockchain and the manner in which right holders are able to control blockchains. While the two...

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is out to change our future. Its scope is not limited to tokenizing physical objects. In the case of Central Bank Digital Currencies (hereinafter, CBDCs), they can change the way we look at money, one of the earliest inventions of humanity.As soon as digital...

This article contextualizes the rise of cryptocurrency within the historical relationship between money and the state. It begins by asking two simple yet critical questions: What is money and where did it come from? Armed with the answers, the article proceeds by taking a fresh look at...

This paper explores the interface between central banks and cryptocurrencies. Focusing on the European Central Bank (ECB), it identifies the potential threats that the rise of cryptocurrencies would pose to the basic and ancillary tasks of the ECB, in particular, its monetary policy operations...

The specificity of statutes is important when the statute provides for criminal penalties. This Essay examines a cryptocurrency fraud prosecution, looking at the issue of whether cryptocurrency is included in securities fraud statutes. It also looks at proposed legislation that would omit...

In the course of their growth and their more recent crisis, cryptocurrencies suffered from tremendous volatility. Volatility impaired cryptocurrencies' ability to serve the needs generally associated with currencies, i.e. serve as a store of value as well as a medium of exchange and a unit of...

Bitcoin is rapidly increasing in use throughout the world. Instrumental to the Bitcoin system, the process for introducing new bitcoin into the system is known as “mining.” Mining involves the use of powerful computer systems and complex, computational algorithms to verify or validate prior...

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...

Breakthroughs in financial technology (fintech), ranging from early coins and banknotes to card payments, e-money, mobile payments, and more recently, cryptocurrencies portend transformative changes to the financial and monetary systems. Bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrencies bear a significant...

Over the years, a wide variety of nontraditional investments from orange groves to earthworms and scotch whiskey have been held to be securities. The securities laws' definition is expansive because of its inclusion of “investment contract” in the statutory definition and the courts'...