Private Digital Currencies and Closed Payment Communities: Law, Regulation and Financial Exclusion After Bitcoin

比特币是基于开源数据库协议（称为区块链）的几种新型在线加密货币或电子支付系统实验中最著名的一个。区块链允许交易在没有中央机构的情况下进行，而是依赖于对等点的去中心化网络进行验证和授权。它允许在没有受信任的第三方或调解人的情况下进行“信任”。此外，比特币和类似系统是基于会员资格的价值转移方式，只有人们积极加入才能发挥作用。该项目研究了私人数字货币的新形式，探索基于区块链的系统的转变，以及创新者和监管机构如何参与、推进和挑战它们。该研究探讨了新的企业和监管专业人员队伍如何创建、理解、监控和监管基于区块链的支付和法律服务实验。 这项研究通过研究法律与技术之间的接口，其重要性不仅仅在于它揭示了快速技术变革背景下的法律和监管。这一点也很重要，因为比特币协议的创新引发了有关货币、财产和法律性质变化的广泛问题，并引发了立法者认为在 19 世纪末解决的有关国家在发行货币和合同性质方面的角色的辩论问题。更广泛的影响包括培训研究生以及创建和开放面向公众的数据库门户以及已编译的监管、政策和行业文件的存档。 随着类似比特币的系统进入法律领域以创建类似法律的替代品，这项研究旨在回答几个问题。 新的数字货币是否会造成新的社会和经济排斥？这些创新对于改变人们对金钱和法律的理解意味着什么？当新进入支付领域的企业想象他们正在货币创新，而不仅仅是货币传输方面的创新，并寻求不仅“颠覆”支付，而且还“颠覆”公证人和托管代理人等职业时，会发生什么？监管机构如何应对支付和法律本身对公共利益的随之而来的挑战？ 主要研究活动是采访律师、监管机构和支付行业专业人士、行业会议的参与者观察以及代码演练，在此期间，研究人员将跟踪程序员在区块链中构建新功能。

Bitcoin is the most famous of several new online, cryptographic currency or electronic payment system experiments based on an open-source database protocol referred to as a blockchain. The blockchain permits transactions to take place without a central authority, relying instead on a decentralized network of peers verifying and authorizing them. It permits "trust" without trusted third-parties or mediators. In addition, Bitcoin and systems like it are membership-based means of value transfer and only work if people actively join them. This project examines new forms of private digital currency, exploring shifts in blockchain-based systems, and how innovators and regulators have participated in, advanced, and challenged them. The research examines how a new cadre of corporate and regulatory professionals are creating, understanding, monitoring, and regulating blockchain-based experiments in payment and in legal services. Studying the interface between law and technology, this research is important not just for what it will reveal about law and regulation in the context of rapid technological change. It is also important because innovations with the bitcoin protocol raise broad questions about the changing nature of money, property, and law, and throw open for debate questions lawmakers thought settled at the end of the 19th century about the state's role in issuing money and the nature of contract. Broader impacts include training of graduate students and the creation and opening of a public-facing portal to a database and archive of compiled regulatory, policy, and industry documents. As bitcoin-like systems move into the domain of law to create law-like substitutes, this research is designed to answer several questions. Do new digital currencies create new social and economic exclusions? What do these innovations say about changing understandings of money and law? What happens when new corporate entrants into payment imagine they are innovating in money, not just its transmission, and seek to "disrupt" not just payment, but professions like notaries and escrow agents? How do regulators respond to concomitant challenges to the public interest in payment and in law itself? The principal research activities are interviews with lawyers, regulators, and payments industry professionals, participant-observation at industry conferences, and code walkthroughs during which the researcher will follow programmers as they build new functionality into the blockchain.