Regulating Blockchain: Techno-Social and Legal Challenges

The emergence of a new financial order driven by technology, disintermediation, and de-bureaucratization is discussed in the book, with a focus on blockchain technology's legal challenges. It provides a critical analysis of the technology's disruptive potential for the economy and the legal system.

\n Format: Hardback
\n Length: 464 pages
\n Publication date: 29 August 2019
\n Publisher: Oxford University Press
\n

Less than a decade after the Financial Crisis, we are witnessing the rapid emergence of a new financial order driven by three distinct yet interconnected dynamics:

First, the rapid application of technology, including big data, machine learning, and distributed computing, to banking, lending, and investing, particularly with the emergence of virtual currencies and digital finance.

Second, a disintermediation fueled by the rise of peer-to-peer lending platforms and crowd investment, which challenge the traditional banking model and may, over time, lead to a transformation of the way both retail and corporate customers bank.

Third, a tendency of de-bureaucratization under which new platforms and technologies challenge established organizational patterns that regulate finance and manage the money supply.

These changes are largely driven by the development of blockchain technology.

The aim of this book is to understand the technological and business potential of blockchain technology and to reflect on its legal challenges. The book primarily focuses on the challenges blockchain technology has so far faced in its first application in the areas of virtual money and finance, as well as those that it will inevitably face (and is partially already facing, as the SEC Investigative Report of June 2017 and an ongoing SEC securities fraud investigation show) as its domain of application expands in other fields of economic activity such as smart contracts and initial coin offerings.

The book provides an unparalleled critical analysis of the disruptive potential of this technology for the economy and the legal system and contributes to current thinking on the role of law in harvesting and shaping innovation.

\n Weight: 974g\n
Dimension: 253 x 180 x 27 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9780198842187\n \n