Law Commons^™

Cryptocurrencies And Code Before The Courts, Vincent Ooi, Kian Peng Soh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In the rapidly developing cyber sphere dominated by cryptocurrencies and code, it is perhaps not uncommon for firms to focus on cutting-edge technological developments leaving the law behind as an afterthought. B2C2 Ltd v Quoine Pte Ltd (‘B2C2’)1 may serve as a timely reminder of the importance of the legal principles supporting e-commerce and Fintech. In the first case of its kind, B2C2 raised several key questions before the Singapore International Commercial Court (‘SICC’), seeking clarification on how the established legal concepts of breach of trust, mistake and unjust enrichment might apply in the context where an automated contract-forming software …

Open Banking: Regulatory Challenges For A New Form Of Financial Intermediation In A Data-Driven World, Nydia Remolina

Centre for AI & Data Governance

Data has taken immense importance in the last years. Consider the amount of data that is being collected worldwide every day, industries are reshaping their activities into a data-driven business. The digital transformation of all industries, portent of the fourth industrial revolution, is creating a new kind of economy based on the datafication of almost any aspect of human social, political and economic activity as a result of the information generated by the numerous daily routines of digitally connected individuals and technology. The financial services industry is part of this trend. Embracing the digital revolution and creating the right foundations …

Cryptocurrencies And Code Before The Courts, Vincent Ooi, Kian Peng Soh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In the rapidly developing cyber sphere of e-commerce and Fintech, dominated by cryptocurrencies and code, it is perhaps not uncommon for firms to focus on cutting-edge technological developments, leaving the law behind as an afterthought. However, the case of B2C2 Ltd v Quoine Pte Ltd (“B2C2”) may serve as a timely reminder of the importance of the legal principles supporting e-commerce and Fintech. In the first case of its kind, B2C2 raised several key questions before the Singapore International Commercial Court, seeking clarification on how the established legal concepts of breach of trust, mistake and unjust enrichment might apply in …

New Tech V. New Deal: Fintech As A Systemic Phenomenon, Saule T. Omarova

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Fintech is the hottest topic in finance today. Recent advances in cryptography, data analytics, and machine learning are visibly "disrupting" traditional methods of delivering financial services and conducting financial transactions. Less visibly, fintech is also changing the way we think about finance: it is gradually recasting our collective understanding of the financial system in normatively neutral terms of applied information science. By making financial transactions easier, faster, and cheaper, fintech seems to promise a micro-level "win-win" solution to the financial system's many ills.

This Article challenges such narratives and presents an alternative account of fintech as a systemic, macro-level phenomenon. …

Money's Past Is Fintech's Future: Wildcat Crypto, The Digital Dollar, And Citizen Central Banking, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Essay argues that crypto-currencies will soon go the way of the ‘wildcat’ banknotes of the mid-19th century. As central banks worldwide upgrade their payments systems, the Fed will begin issuing a ‘digital dollar’ that leaves no licit function for what the Author calls ‘wildcat crypto.’ But the imminent change heralds more than a shakeout in fintech. It will also make possible a new era of what the Author calls ‘Citizen Central Banking.’ The Fed will administer a national system of ‘Citizen Accounts.’ This will not only end the problem of the ‘unbanked,’ it will also simplify monetary policy. Instead …

Guarantor Of Last Resort: Is There A Better Alternative?, Morgan Ricks

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

What should the government’s financial-crisis-response toolkit consist of? How should we think about its optimal scope and design? In Kate Judge offers a novel perspective on these questions. At a high level she agrees with Summers, Bernanke, Paulson, and Geithner that the existing toolkit is inadequate. In this respect she joins a number of other legal scholars and commentators. . .

The day after Lehman’s bankruptcy, Ken Rogoff—among the world’s leading experts on financial crises—wrote an op-ed titled “No More Creampuffs.” He applauded regulators for letting Lehman fail and “forc[ing] some discipline onto the system.” (To be fair, Rogoff acknowledged …

Coin-Operated Capitalism, Shaanan Cohney, David A. Hoffman, Jeremy Sklaroff, David A. Wishnick

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article presents the legal literature’s first detailed analysis of the inner workings of Initial Coin Offerings. We characterize the ICO as an example of financial innovation, placing it in kinship with venture capital contracting, asset securitization, and (obviously) the IPO. We also take the form seriously as an example of technological innovation, where promoters are beginning to effectuate their promises to investors through computer code, rather than traditional contract. To understand the dynamics of this shift, we first collect contracts, “white papers,” and other contract-like documents for the fifty top-grossing ICOs of 2017. We then analyze how such projects’ …

Global Standards For Securities Holding Infrastructures: A Soft Law/Fintech Model For Reform, Charles W. Mooney Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

Intermediaries such as stockbrokers and banks are ubiquitous in global securities markets, playing essential roles in markets, including trading, settling trades, and post-settlement holding of securities. This essay focuses in particular on the roles of intermediaries in securities holding systems. It proposes an IOSCO-led “soft-law-to-hard-law” approach to the development of Global Standards for reforms to these holding systems. States would be expected to adopt “hard law” reforms through statutory and regulatory adjustments to securities holding systems. The reforms would embrace not only important standards of a functional and regulatory nature, but also holistic standards relating to the private law, insolvency …

Fintech Lending: A Study Of Expectations Versus Market Outcomes, Vincent Dilorenzo

Faculty Publications

This article explores expectations and outcomes. It documents the expectations for the fintech lending industry, which has emerged in this decade, and compares such expectations to market outcomes. It presents an evidence-based analysis for policy making decisions. Part one of the article documents expectations—possible benefits and risks of fintech lending—through large-scale surveys and interviews of industry, consumer and government stakeholders. Part two of the article examines market outcomes—benefits and risks that have been realized or failed to materialize as documented by studies of substantial data sets of various types of fintech loans. The benefits and risks explored include increased access …

Fintech And The Innovation Trilemma, Yesha Yadav, Chris Brummer

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Whether in response to roboadvising, artificial intelligence, or crypto-currencies like Bitcoin, regulators around the world have made it a top policy priority to supervise the exponential growth of financial technology (or "fintech") in the post-Crisis era. However, applying traditional regulatory strategies to new technological ecosystems has proven conceptually difficult. Part of the challenge lies in the tradeoffs involved in regulating innovations that could conceivably both help and hurt consumers and market participants alike. Problems also arise from the common assumption that today's fintech is a mere continuation of the story of innovation that has shaped finance for centuries.

This Article …

Back To The Future Of Cyber Insurance, Tom Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

Written for an insurance trade publication, this brief essay identifies five ways that insurers manage uncertainty in selling cyber insurance: (1) providing valuable services beyond risk transfer; (2) contract design, (3) rapid iteration of pricing and forms, (4) limits management and reinsurance, and (5) claims disputing. Cyber insurers provide easy-to-price loss prevention and mitigation services so that the value proposition includes more than the (difficult to price) risk transfer. Cyber insurers design their contracts to include narrowly defined categories of coverage, typically with separate limits and with claims-made coverage for liability risks, and traditional insurers design their contracts to limit …