Mapping the Global Legal Landscape of Blockchain and Other Distributed Ledger Technologies

Abstract

Blockchain technologies are beginning to push a broad array of global economic activities away from centralized and toward decentralized market structures. Governments should tackle the new regulatory conundrums of an increasingly disintermediated global economy by focusing on blockchain’s individual use cases rather than its underlying enabling technologies. Grouping the known use cases around common characteristics reveals three broad categories of blockchain/law interfaces: the green box, the dark box, and the sandbox. Each raises distinctive legal, regulatory and policy challenges deserving of separate analysis.

Keywords: blockchain, distributed ledger technologies, DLT, Bitcoin, Ethereum, RegTech, Smart Contracts