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After Ftx: Can The Original Bitcoin Use Case Be Saved?, Mark Burge
After Ftx: Can The Original Bitcoin Use Case Be Saved?, Mark Burge
Faculty Scholarship
Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies spawned by the innovation of blockchain programming have exploded in prominence, both in gains of massive market value and in dramatic market losses, the latter most notably seen in connection with the failure of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange in November 2022. After years of investment and speculation, however, something crucial has faded: the original use case for Bitcoin as a system of payment. Can cryptocurrency-as-a-payment-system be saved, or are day traders and speculators the actual cryptocurrency future? This article suggests that cryptocurrency has been hobbled by a lack of foundational commercial and consumer-protection law that …
The Private Law Of Stablecoins, Kara J. Bruce, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato
The Private Law Of Stablecoins, Kara J. Bruce, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato
Faculty Scholarship
Stablecoins are one of the cornerstones of the crypto world. They’ve attracted significant attention over the past few years, ranging from Wall Street to kitchen table investors, and even the White House. As a less volatile alternative to crypto-assets like bitcoin, stablecoins have the potential to change the way we make payments, unlock the groundwork needed for more blockchain-based applications, and even reorient the economy toward private money. But how stable are these stablecoins, really? Can they be relied upon in the way their many proponents claim? And how much of the popular beliefs about stablecoins match their realities? That’s …
Fossil Fortunes: Regulating Commercial Paleontology & Incentivizing Fossil Discovery, Ashlee A. Paxton-Turner
Fossil Fortunes: Regulating Commercial Paleontology & Incentivizing Fossil Discovery, Ashlee A. Paxton-Turner
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The New Data Of Student Debt, Christopher K. Odinet
The New Data Of Student Debt, Christopher K. Odinet
Faculty Scholarship
Where you go to college and what you choose to study has always been important, but, with the help of data science, it may now determine whether you get a student loan. Silicon Valley is increasingly setting its sights on student lending. Financial technology (“fintech”) firms such as SoFi, CommonBond, and Upstart are ever-expanding their online lending activities to help students finance or refinance educational expenses. These online companies are using a wide array of alternative, education-based data points—ranging from applicants’ chosen majors, assessment scores, the college or university they attend, job history, and cohort default rates—to determine creditworthiness. Fintech …
Empowering The Poor: Turning De Facto Rights Into Collateralized Credit, Steven L. Schwarcz
Empowering The Poor: Turning De Facto Rights Into Collateralized Credit, Steven L. Schwarcz
Faculty Scholarship
The shrinking middle class and the widening gap between the rich and the poor constitute significant threats to social and financial stability. One of the main impediments to upward mobility is the inability of economically disadvantaged people to use their property — in which they sometimes hold only de facto, not de jure, rights — as collateral to obtain credit. This Article argues that commercial law should recognize those de facto rights, enabling the poor to borrow to start businesses or otherwise create wealth. Recognition not only would provide benefits that exceed its costs; it also would be consistent with, …
Testing The Reach Of Ucc Article 9: The Question Of Tax Credit Collateral In Secured Transactions, Christopher K. Odinet
Testing The Reach Of Ucc Article 9: The Question Of Tax Credit Collateral In Secured Transactions, Christopher K. Odinet
Faculty Scholarship
This Article addresses the open question related to the use of tax credits as a source of secured capital. It first lays a foundation by analyzing the theoretical underpinnings of the UCC’s category for general intangibles and shows how classification as a general intangible can and should comport with the legal substance of tax credits as a form of secured financing. The work also investigates the theory and nature that forms the basis of tax credits and their economic value. Next, the Article provides an overview of the relatively meager case law on tax credit financing and explains how courts …
My Brother's Keeper: An Empirical Study Of Attorney Facilitation Of Money-Laundering Through Commercial Transactions, Lawton P. Cummings, Paul T. Stepnowsky
My Brother's Keeper: An Empirical Study Of Attorney Facilitation Of Money-Laundering Through Commercial Transactions, Lawton P. Cummings, Paul T. Stepnowsky
Faculty Scholarship
In recent years, various “gatekeeping initiatives” have been introduced through inter-governmental standard-setting organizations, such as the Financial Action Task Force, as well as through federal legislation in the United States, which seek to apply the mandatory customer due diligence, record keeping, and suspicious activity reporting obligations contained in the existing anti-money laundering regime to lawyers when they conduct certain commercial transactions on behalf of their clients. The organized bar has argued against such attempts to regulate it, in part, due to the lack of empirical data showing that, as a threshold matter, lawyers unwittingly aid money laundering in a significant …
From St. Ives To Cyberspace: The Modern Distortion Of The Medieval ‘Law Merchant’, Stephen E. Sachs
From St. Ives To Cyberspace: The Modern Distortion Of The Medieval ‘Law Merchant’, Stephen E. Sachs
Faculty Scholarship
Modern advocates of corporate self-regulation have drawn unlikely inspiration from the Middle Ages. On the traditional view of history, medieval merchants who wandered from fair to fair were not governed by domestic laws, but by their own lex mercatoria, or "law merchant. " This law, which uniformly regulated commerce across Europe, was supposedly produced by an autonomous merchant class, interpreted in private courts, and enforced through private sanctions rather than state coercion. Contemporary writers have treated global corporations as descendants of these itinerant traders, urging them to replace conflicting national laws with a transnational law of their own creation. The …
Legal Design And The Evolution Of Commercial Norms, Jody S. Kraus
Legal Design And The Evolution Of Commercial Norms, Jody S. Kraus
Faculty Scholarship
The Uniform Commercial Code determines the content of most commercial law default rules by incorporating common merchant practices. The success of this incorporation strategy depends on the likely efficiency of evolved commercial practices. In this Article, I use the best available theory of cultural evolution to analyze how and why commercial practices evolve. This analysis confirms that the incorporation strategy is far superior to a system in which lawmakers rely predominantly on individual analysis and experimentation to design commercial law. But the analysis also demonstrates that common commercial practices, and the laws incorporating them, are unlikely to be optimal, in …
An Economic Analysis Of The Lost-Volume Retail Seller, Victor P. Goldberg
An Economic Analysis Of The Lost-Volume Retail Seller, Victor P. Goldberg
Faculty Scholarship
Suppose that a customer agrees to buy a boat and before it is delivered, he reneges. The dealer subsequently resells the boat to another customer at the same price. Has the seller suffered damages (aside from incidental damages) and, if so, should he be compensated? This question, dubbed the lost-volume seller problem, has been the subject of considerable legal analysis, usually in the context of explicating section 2-708(2) of the Uniform Commercial Code (U.C.C.). There have been a number of attempts to apply economic analysis to this difficult question, the most recent by Professors Goetz and Scott. Unfortunately, the economic …
Book Review, Paul D. Carrington
Book Review, Paul D. Carrington
Faculty Scholarship
Reviewing John Honnold and E. Allan Farnsworth, Cases and Materials on Commercial Law (1965)