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

比特币是几种基于开源数据库协议（区块链）的新型在线加密货币或电子支付系统实验中最著名的。区块链允许交易在没有中央机构的情况下进行，而是依赖于一个分散的对等网络来验证和授权它们。它允许“信任”，而无需信任第三方或调解人。此外，比特币和类似的系统是基于会员资格的价值转移手段，只有在人们积极加入的情况下才能发挥作用。该项目研究了私人数字货币的新形式，探索了基于区块链系统的转变，以及创新者和监管机构如何参与、推进和挑战它们。该研究考察了一批新的企业和监管专业人士如何在支付和法律服务领域创建、理解、监控和监管基于区块链的实验。研究法律与技术之间的界面，这项研究的重要性不仅在于它将揭示在快速技术变革背景下的法律和法规。比特币协议的创新也很重要，因为它引发了关于货币、财产和法律性质变化的广泛问题，并引发了立法者在19世纪末认为已经解决的关于国家在发行货币中的作用和合同性质的辩论。更广泛的影响包括培训研究生，创建和开放面向公众的门户网站，以建立数据库和存档汇编的法规、政策和行业文件。随着类似比特币的系统进入法律领域，创造类似法律的替代品，这项研究旨在回答几个问题。新的数字货币是否会产生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自己在货币方面进行创新，而不仅仅是在货币的传输方面，并试图“颠覆”不仅是支付，还包括公证人和托管代理等职业时，会发生什么？监管机构如何应对随之而来的支付和法律本身对公众利益的挑战？主要的研究活动是与律师、监管机构和支付行业专业人士的访谈，在行业会议上的参与者观察，以及代码演练，在此期间，研究人员将跟随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.