An increasing number of financial institutions and fintech companies are coming together to create consortia or shared utility service providers that will identify, design, build and provide emerging technologies like blockchain and the possibility of using decentralized, distributed ledger technology that can be accessed and used by market participants to record information.
Continue Reading Challenges with the Evolution of Blockchain
Any digital record of bank deposits opens up the possibility that its underlying set of data may be copied and that the nominal amount deposited may be spent more than once. With conventional bank deposits, banks monitor the digital records and are trusted to ensure their validity. With so-called “digital currencies” like Bitcoin, by contrast, the ledger containing the record of all transactions by all users is available to the public. Rather than requiring users to have trust in a central third party, reliance is placed upon the network and the algorithmic rules established to reliably change the ledger. The authentication technologies underpinning Bitcoin – known as distributed ledger or Blockchain-technologies – enable multiple instances of data to be synchronized and updated.
Continue Reading Blockchain Technologies Move further into the Mainstream
Virtual currencies, especially Bitcoins, have attracted much public attention as well as scholarly interest. Many related issues have, however, not yet been fully clarified and are still being addressed in specialized literature. Particularly whether, despite the fact that they do not have legal tender status in any jurisdiction, Bitcoins could be qualified as “money”, both from a legal and an economic point of view. From a legal perspective, the question whether or not a medium fulfils economic functions of money has proven to be relevant – for example, some US court rulings have taken a functional approach when qualifying Bitcoins as money in a legal sense.
Continue Reading Do Bitcoins Fulfil Economic Functions of Money? Some Courts (and Advocates-General) Seem to Think So