Financial Services Law And Distributed Ledger Technology

This incisive book examines the extent to which existing UK financial service regulations can be applied to digital assets and decentralised financial services provided by distributed networks. Brendan McGurk and Stefan Reichenbach consider the wider legal issues beyond regulatory enforcement, attributable to the use of distributed ledger technology based financial services.

This fully updated and revised second edition provides a practical examination of the opportunities and challenges presented by the rapid development of FinTech in recent years, particularly for regulators, who must decide how to apply current law to ever-changing concepts driven by continually advancing technologies. It addresses new legislative guidance on the treatment of cryptoassets and smart contracts, the European Commission’s Digital Finance Strategy and FinTech Action Plan, as well as analysing significant recent cases.

This fully revised and updated third edition provides a practical examination of legal and regulatory issues in FinTech, a sector whose rapid rise in recent years has produced opportunities for innovation but has also raised new challenges. Featuring insights from over 40 experts from 10 countries, this book analyses the statutory aspects of technology-enabled developments in banking and considers the impact these changes will have on the legal profession.

Consumer behaviour is rapidly trending towards the use of digital devices as instruments through which to transact day-to-day business. This original and timely book shows how this trend creates new opportunities not only for retail consumers but also for financial service providers, regulators and central banks. The author offers a comprehensive overview of these opportunities and their countervailing legal and regulatory challenges. The author describes and analyses in unprecedented detail the application of digital financial innovation (FinTech), and some of its core manifestations, including virtual currencies, Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies to the delivery of financial services, in areas such as: – payments; – securities clearing and settlement; – central banking; – real-time access to financial information; – instant completion of core financial transactions; – data validation and reconciliation processes; and – digital contracting (smart contracts). Also clarified are the legal and other barriers to be overcome – including cybersecurity and risks to privacy – before any widespread adoption of digital innovation in the highly regulated financial sector context can occur. As an informed assessment of the legal merits and risks of technological innovation for financial service providers and central banks, and as a contribution to establishing a conceptual framework within which to analyse and better understand the applications of digital innovation to the financial sector, this practical work is bound to be welcomed by legal practitioners and legal scholars alike with an interest in financial services. Policymakers and regulators will also appreciate its guidance on how to temper the less benevolent aspects of FinTech with targeted, risk-focused regulation, so as to promote innovation and preserve the potential benefits for financial markets and their participants alike.

Financial technology is rapidly changing and shaping financial services and markets. These changes are considered making the future of finance a digital one.This Handbook analyses developments in the financial services, products and markets that are being reshaped by technologically driven changes with a view to their policy, regulatory, supervisory and other legal implications. The Handbook aims to illustrate the crucial role the law has to play in tackling the revolutionary developments in the financial sector by offering a framework of legally enforceable principles and values in which such innovations might take place without threatening the acquis of financial markets law and more generally the rule of law and basic human rights. With contributions from international leading experts, topics will include: Policy, High-level Principles, Trends and Perspectives Fintech and Lending Fintech and Payment Services Fintech, Investment and Insurance Services Fintech, Financial Inclusion and Sustainable Finance Cryptocurrencies and Cryptoassets Markets and Trading Regtech and Suptech This Handbook will be of great relevance for practitioners and students alike, and a first reference point for academics researching in the fields of banking and financial markets law.

Crypto-Finance, Law and Regulation investigates whether crypto-finance will cause a paradigm shift in regulation from a centralised model to a model based on distributed consensus. This book explores the emergence of a decentralised and disintermediated crypto-market and investigates the way in which it can transform the financial markets. It examines three components of the financial market – technology, finance, and the law – and shows how their interrelationship dictates the structure of a crypto-market. It focuses on regulators’ enforcement policies and their jurisdiction over crypto-finance operators and participants. The book also discusses the latest developments in crypto-finance, and the advantages and disadvantages of crypto-currency as an alternative payment product. It also investigates how such a decentralised crypto-finance system can provide access to finance, promote a shared economy, and allow access to justice. By exploring the law, regulation and governance of crypto-finance from a national, regional and global viewpoint, the book provides a fascinating and comprehensive overview of this important topic and will appeal to students, scholars and practitioners interested in regulation, finance and the law.

In recent years, technology has emerged as a disruptive force in the economy and finance, leading to the establishment of new economic and financial paradigms. Focusing on blockchain technology and its implementations in finance, Technology in Financial Markets proposes a novel theoretical approach to disruption. Relying on complexity science, it develops a dynamic perspective on the study of disruptive phenomena and their relationship to financial regulation and the law. It identifies the intrinsic interconnections characterizing the "multidimensional" technology-driven transformations, involving commercial practices, capital markets, corporate-governance, central banking, and financial networks. From this perspective, it considers the way they are reflected at the level of contract law, financial law, corporate law, central banking law. The book adopts a unique comparative approach and explains and clarifies the factual and historical dimensions underlying the emergence of the crypto-economy. In this book blockchain is used as a case study. Blockchain exemplifies the way each subpart of the financial system - commercial practices, financial markets, corporations, central banking, networks - and consequently each subcategory of financial regulation evolves on an individual basis. It shows how such subparts evolve altogether bringing systemic transformations, and ultimately leading to the creation of new economic and financial paradigms. The book considers both these perspectives, analysing the evolution of each subpart and emphasizing the interconnected transformations. In doing this, it adopts the structure of an ascending climax, starting from contracts, and escalating to increasingly broad dimensions, in particular capital markets, corporate governance, central banking, and financial networks.

Less than a decade after the Financial Crisis, we are witnessing the fast emergence of a new financial order driven by three different, yet interconnected, dynamics: first, the rapid application of technology - such as big data, machine learning, and distributed computing - to banking, lending, and investing, in particular with the emergence of virtual currencies and digital finance; second, a disintermediation fuelled by the rise of peer-to-peer lending platforms and crowd investment which challenge the traditional banking model and may, over time, lead to a transformation of the way both retail and corporate customers bank; and, third, a tendency of de-bureaucratisation under which new platforms and technologies challenge established organisational patterns that regulate finance and manage the money supply. These changes are to a significant degree driven by the development of blockchain technology. The aim of this book is to understand the technological and business potential of the blockchain technology and to reflect on its legal challenges. The book mainly focuses on the challenges blockchain technology has so far faced in its first application in the areas of virtual money and finance, as well as those that it will inevitably face (and is partially already facing, as the SEC Investigative Report of June 2017 and an ongoing SEC securities fraud investigation show) as its domain of application expands in other fields of economic activity such as smart contracts and initial coin offerings. The book provides an unparalleled critical analysis of the disruptive potential of this technology for the economy and the legal system and contributes to current thinking on the role of law in harvesting and shaping innovation.