Book Talk: Blockchain and the Law

The book talk introduces Primavera De Filippi's and Aaron Wright's "Blockchain and the Law", which urges the legal systems to catch up with emerging technologies. That is because disintermediation—a blockchain’s greatest asset—subverts critical regulation. By cutting out middlemen, such as large online operators and multinational corporations, blockchains run the risk of undermining the capacity of governmental authorities to supervise activities in banking, commerce, law, and other vital areas.

De Filippi and Wright welcome the new possibilities inherent in blockchains. But as "Blockchain and the Law" makes clear, the technology cannot be harnessed productively without new rules and new approaches to legal thinking.

Please register with katrin.ludwig [at] wzb.eu until June 12, 2018.