Are Blockchains and Cybercurrencies Demanding a New Legislative Framework

Abstract

The digital economy and especially Blockchain technology are opening interesting new fields for regulating and legislative authorities. Some government representatives make the mistake to look at blockchain applications mainly as underlying technology for cryptocurrency technologies. But the technology can be used far wider as a way for secure decentralized data storage. Storing data on worldwide networks makes the blockchain applications difficult to regulate as they are not residing in a specific area of influence of any given regulation or jurisdiction. Also the blockchain applications offer an extensive level of anonymity to their stakeholders. In future artificial intelligence will start to optimize the applications and trigger decisions automatically which will become a major challenge for competition and anti-trust regulators as it will be difficult to define legal entities with responsibility for the action taken. Beside building up an appropriate regulation regime the inherent challenges in blockchain technologies will ask for a strong self-regulation of the market participants in the digital marketplace.