Mapping the Global Legal Landscape of Blockchain Technologies

Citation
Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law & International Law & Centre for International Governance Innovation, Mapping the Global Legal Landscape of Blockchain Technologies (Feb. 14, 2017)

Overview
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.