Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Law
Crypto-Counterfeiting, Joshua Fairfield
Crypto-Counterfeiting, Joshua Fairfield
Scholarly Articles
The current crypto winter has given rise to a range of legal challenges. One of the most important sets of legal challenges goes to the heart of cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency was intended to be non-duplicatable at will, that is, not to be counterfeitable. Blockchain technology is supposed to prevent token counterfeiting through a combination of game theory and cryptography that prevents normal users from simply ordering the system to generate more tokens for their benefit.
The difficulty is that blockchain software is still software. People in charge can order and program the software to generate many more tokens for those individuals’ …
Making Virtual Things, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Making Virtual Things, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Scholarly Articles
People value virtual things—such as NFTs—because such assets trigger and satisfy deep-seated narratives of property and ownership. The cause of the recent series of failures to regulate virtual assets, and the resulting crashes, has been a failure to take seriously the ways people perceive and use the assets. Current legal frameworks fail to support buyers’ and users’ expectations of ownership in virtual things they purchase.
Making virtual things is a matter of social construction of value. Virtual things, like real-world things, have value because a community values them for a purpose. It therefore makes no sense to discount how and …
The Human Element: The Under-Theorized And Underutilized Component Vital To Fostering Blockchain Development, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
The Human Element: The Under-Theorized And Underutilized Component Vital To Fostering Blockchain Development, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Scholarly Articles
This Article constitutes a lightly edited transcription of Joshua Fairfield's oral remarks at the April 6, 2018 Cleveland State Law Review Symposium on Blockchain Law and Technology.
The author posits that there is a tendency to think that technology will emerge triumphant in resolving physical problems, including banking and transactional recording; that there is sort of a "tech-bro utopianism," epitomized by Mark Zuckerberg, suggesting that what we need is a technological, not a human, solution. He states that one major problem is that social technologists, psychologists, historians, linguists, and cultural anthropologists are not on the development teams that are building …