Blockchain and the Law: A Critical Evaluation

It is a high-risk, high-reward enterprise to write a scholarly monograph on an emerging technology when its societal use, economic worth, and even its technical design are still in flux. With little empirical material with which to work, one often has to resort to extrapolating the future developments from the myriad seed of possibilities of the present. Yet, there are moments in time when undertaking such an enterprise seems inevitable, because there is a rough consensus that the emerging technology represents more than just an incremental improvement of already existing routines, and promises—or threatens—a disruption of the status quo. Such is the case of blockchain or distributed ledger technologies. In that light, Primavera De Filippi’s and Aaron Wright’s Blockchain and the Law is a timely and valuable contribution.