The UK Jurisdiction Taskforce (UKJT), an industry-led group of LawtechUK, tasked with ‘positioning English law as a law of choice for new technologies’, has launched a public consultation on the issuance and transfer of digital securities via blockchain technology under English private law.
The consultation aims to ‘provide clarity to the market as to the types of digital security models which English law will support’.
They continued: ‘A number of jurisdictions, including Luxembourg and France, have introduced tailored legislative frameworks to facilitate the commercial use of blockchain and DLT under their respective legal systems. However, no similar statutory regime has been introduced in the UK and there is some perception in the market that English law may be comparatively less supportive of digital securities.
‘The consultation aims to address these concerns and promote the choice of English law for digital securities arrangements. Despite the lack of a statutory regime or case law specifically considering digital securities, English common law provides a high degree of flexibility and is already capable of accommodating many digital security structures.‘
The main aim therefore is to understand whether English private law supports the issuance and transfer of equity or debt digital securities using ‘a system deploying blockchain or DLT’.
And to put this in some context, the UKJT in November 2018 published its Legal Statement on the Status of Cryptoassets and Smart Contracts. The Legal Statement expressed the view that cryptoassets were property and smart contracts were contracts under English law.
Then, on 22 April 2021, they published its Digital Dispute Resolution Rules to be incorporated into on-chain digital relationships and smart contracts. They allow for arbitral or expert dispute resolution in very short periods, for arbitrators to implement decisions directly on-chain using a private key, and for…
