New York Lawyers Propose Toolkit for Keeping ‘Decentralized’ Blockchains Honest

An Indian official has reportedly confirmed that the country’s government will propose a ban on holding or using cryptocurrency.

A law firm in New York is reviewing how the use of the blockchain technology can remove many of the manual steps that are required when it comes to executing smart contracts. The law firm, Hogan Lovells, is considering how smart contracts and the blockchain can automatically execute agreements without the need for human interaction, thus helping to free up lawyers time. In a blog from the Wall Street Journal, the use of smart contracts will ensure that terms of a contract are enforced in a faster time; however, this also means that there needs to be a closer relationship between the....

A few months ago I was writing a research paper centered on this question: Is there a use case for private blockchains? I'll be honest, I started writing it with my conclusions already on mind. I was totally biased. My thoughts were basically that private blockchains (and the lack of PoW) couldn't offer more security than a distributed database. And at the same time they were pretty limited and based on a much more immature technology. So, why on earth a bank or any organization would use a private blockchain instead of a well known and proven technology? Simple answer: fad. Nevertheless,....

Lawyers and bitcoin groups in Australia are joining those in other countries in calling for greater clarity on bitcoin regulation, allowing clearer direction for both businesses and consumers on how to conduct their affairs in a digital currency economy. Bitcoin now backs a business ecosystem into which hundreds of millions of investment dollars are pouring. No longer just a hobby for programmers and political activists, the fledgling industry is in need of more established structures to support those investments. There is a growing argument for such structures: lawyers in Poland this week....

No, smart contracts will not rid the world of lawyers, despite the greatest efforts of blockchain innovators. At least, that's according to Nick Szabo, the man widely credited with inventing the smart contract concept itself. During the keynote address at the Smart Contracts Symposium at Microsoft's New York headquarters this week, Szabo gave an update on the industry he helped create – a talk that was followed by a string of commenters from smart contract startups. Addressing a group of about 250 people (comprised largely of members of the blockchain trade association, the Chamber of....