This book addresses perhaps the most pervasive, topical and unsettled collection of themes and questions in the contemporary legal world, subsisting in private law and emergent technologies such as digital assets, blockchain and cryptocurrency. Private law frameworks across the globe are struggling to keep pace with rapid technological developments that typify the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This sluggishness is triggering a swathe of important but unanswered practical and theoretical legal questions. These questions concern critical matters of legality, practicality, utility, appropriate regulation, and the underlying theoretical basis for state intervention.

This book uniquely combines a variety of themes which have not been the subject of significant writing and which are sure to inform live discourse and regulatory efforts in the space of digital assets and infrastructure, blockchain, cryptocurrency and related emerging technologies. Private law currently finds itself at a crossroads, and governments and courts are frantically searching for guidance as to how to approach the themes and questions addressed in this book. Legal practitioners, scholars and students of the law are equally perplexed as to private law's current and future directions in this space. The book therefore offers essential perspectives that will appeal to legislators, regulators, judges, lawyers, scholars, and students alike.