This book focuses on the building of a crypto economy as an alternative economic space and discusses how the crypto economy should be governed. The crypto economy is examined in its productive and financialised aspects, in order to distil the need for governance in this economic space.
The author argues that it is imperative for regulatory policy to develop the economic governance of the blockchain-based business model, in order to facilitate economic mobilisation and wealth creation. The regulatory framework should cater for a new and unique enterprise organisational law and the fund-raising and financing of blockchain-based development projects. Such a regulatory framework is crucially enabling in nature and consistent with the tenets of regulatory capitalism.
Further, the book acknowledges the rising importance of private monetary orders in the crypto economy and native payment systems that do not rely on conventional institutions for value transfer. A regulatory blueprint is proposed for governing such monetary orders as 'commons' governance. The rise of Decentralised Finance and other financial innovations in the crypto economy are also discussed, and the book suggests a framework for regulatory consideration in this dynamic landscape in order to meet a balance of public interest objectives and private interests.
By setting out a reform agenda in relation to economic and financial governance in the crypto economy, this forward-looking work argues for the extension of 'regulatory capitalism' to this perceived 'wild west' of an alternative economic space. It advances the message that an innovative regulatory agenda is needed to account for the economically disruptive and technologically transformative developments brought about by the crypto economy.
Iris H-Y Chiu is Professor of Corporate Law and Financial Regulation at University College London, UK.
John Linarelli is Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh, USA.
Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell is Associate Professor of Commercial Law at University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain. She is also currently Sir Roy Goode Scholar at UNIDROIT, Rome (2021-22) and previously held the Chair of Excellence at Harris Manchester College, Oxford University.
Teresa is an arbitrator at the Madrid Court of Arbitration and the Spanish Court of Arbitration, a member of the Spanish Advertising Standards Tribunal (Autocontrol), member of the European Commission Expert Group on Liability and New Technologies, member of European Union Expert Group for the Observatory on the Online Platform Economy, Delegate for Spain before UNIDROIT and UNCITRAL Working Group VI on Security Interests, and member nominated by UNIDROIT of the Expert Study Group on a Fourth Protocol for the Cape Town Convention on International Security Interests.
She has held fellowships at the European Central Bank Legal Research Programme 2018 with a project on Fintech regulation, the Transatlantic Technology Law Forum, Stanford Law School, and was a Marie Curie Fellow at the Centre of European Law and Politics (ZERP), University of Bremen. In addition she has held visiting professorships at Oxford University, Toulouse 1 University Capitole, Columbia Law School, Tulane University Law School, the University of the Andes, the University of Turin, the University of Tokyo and University College London.
