David Fox and Sarah Green (eds), Cryptocurrencies in Public and Private Law
| Published date | 01 May 2020 |
| Pages | 309-311 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2020.0639 |
| Date | 01 May 2020 |
Cryptocurrencies and the developing global market facilitated by their use are among the most debated issues in recent years. Traditional legal concepts and principles are being challenged to accommodate the development of cryptocurrencies and to provide adequate responses to the legal questions posed by them. This edited book, under review, brings together contributions written by leading experts in their respective fields and constitutes one of the very first books to address the legal aspects of cryptocurrencies in detail and in different fields of law.
The book consists of eleven chapters, chapter one being an introductory chapter for both the basics of distributed ledger technology underpinning cryptocurrencies and for the ten substantive chapters looking at various legal questions raised by cryptocurrencies. One of the distinguishing aspects of the book is that it analyses cryptocurrencies under both public and private law and gives the reader a comparative understanding by taking account of approaches in different legal jurisdictions. It is a challenge to publish an up-to-date work on cryptocurrencies as the landscape keeps evolving rapidly, but the book is successful in this respect and is as current as possible at the publication date.
Chapter two by Sarah Green and chapter three by Charles Proctor analyse, primarily from an English law perspective, the status of cryptocurrency and what consequences it may have in the private law context and in the international and public law contexts respectively. It is generally accepted that cryptocurrencies function as a medium of exchange but currently not a store of value and unit of account, which results in them not being considered as money under the traditional understanding. The usefulness of this approach and of the current distinction made between fiat and cryptocurrencies is questioned critically by Green from a private law point of view via a demonstration of the need for law to protect legitimate expectations of contracting parties in their arrangements in cryptocurrencies and to provide them with remedial actions available in similar arrangements in fiat currencies. Green suggests that, for the purposes of English private law, cryptocurrencies functioning as a medium of exchange are to be treated as money. Proctor, in his analysis in the international and public law contexts, classifies cryptocurrencies not as money in the strict sense but as a new asset class or species of property or...
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