That German-Singapore Lawyer
Over lunch the in-house counsel of a tech company asked me whether I ever decline work. We were making small talk, but funny she should ask. Because I have indeed chosen not to work on one or the other initial coin offering or token sale lately.
I do what I do for a living, so I’m not prone to decline work by default. But these projects didn’t smell right.
Smart contracts are described as self-executing: how they are formed is how they will be performed. This is why some of us see no (or at least less) room for legal dispute over them.
It shouldn’t be this way. Where it’s efficient, it should be possible to breach a smart contract. Even though this may lead to a legal dispute.
Yes, blockchain technology can do things which conventional ledgers or registers cannot do. A few days ago I argued that this didn’t mean blockchain should replace traditional ways of recording legal transactions wholesale. Traditional ways of recording legal transactions embed functions which blockchains don’t embed yet. Where the law demands it or wherever else it makes sense we should think about implementing them.
Here’s in more detail what I had in mind.
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