



Award Abstract #1455859

Private Digital Currencies and Closed Payment Communities: Law, Regulation and Financial Exclusion After Bitcoin

NSF Org: SES

Divn Of Social and Economic Sciences

Initial Amendment Date: February 11, 2015 Latest Amendment Date: June 11, 2018 Award Number: 1455859 Award Instrument: Continuing Grant Program Manager: Reggie Sheehan

SES Divn Of Social and Economic Sciences

SBE Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie Start Date: July 1, 2015 End Date: June 30, 2020 (Estimated) Awarded Amount to Date: $319,705.00 Investigator(s): William Maurer wmmaurer@uci.edu (Principal Investigator)

Sponsor: University of California-Irvine

141 Innovation Drive, Ste 250

Irvine, CA 92617-3213 (949)824-7295 NSF Program(s): LSS-Law And Social Sciences Program Reference Code(s): 9178, 9179, 9251 Program Element Code(s): 1372

ABSTRACT



Bitcoin is the most famous of several new online, cryptographic currency or electronic payment system experiments based on an open-source database protocol referred to as a blockchain. The blockchain permits transactions to take place without a central authority, relying instead on a decentralized network of peers verifying and authorizing them. It permits "trust" without trusted third-parties or mediators. In addition, Bitcoin and systems like it are membership-based means of value transfer and only work if people actively join them. This project examines new forms of private digital currency, exploring shifts in blockchain-based systems, and how innovators and regulators have participated in, advanced, and challenged them. The research examines how a new cadre of corporate and regulatory professionals are creating, understanding, monitoring, and regulating blockchain-based experiments in payment and in legal services. Studying the interface between law and technology, this research is important not just for what it will reveal about law and regulation in the context of rapid technological change. It is also important because innovations with the bitcoin protocol raise broad questions about the changing nature of money, property, and law, and throw open for debate questions lawmakers thought settled at the end of the 19th century about the state's role in issuing money and the nature of contract. Broader impacts include training of graduate students and the creation and opening of a public-facing portal to a database and archive of compiled regulatory, policy, and industry documents.



As bitcoin-like systems move into the domain of law to create law-like substitutes, this research is designed to answer several questions. Do new digital currencies create new social and economic exclusions? What do these innovations say about changing understandings of money and law? What happens when new corporate entrants into payment imagine they are innovating in money, not just its transmission, and seek to "disrupt" not just payment, but professions like notaries and escrow agents? How do regulators respond to concomitant challenges to the public interest in payment and in law itself? The principal research activities are interviews with lawyers, regulators, and payments industry professionals, participant-observation at industry conferences, and code walkthroughs during which the researcher will follow programmers as they build new functionality into the blockchain.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH



Note: When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external site maintained by the publisher. Some full text articles may not yet be available without a charge during the embargo (administrative interval).



Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Their policies may differ from this site.



Bill Maurer. "Re-risking in Realtime: On Possible Futures for Finance after the Blockchain," Behemoth: A Journal on Civilization, v.9, 2016, p. 10.6094/b. doiID



Taylor C. Nelms, Bill Maurer, Lana Swartz, Scott Mainwaring. "The Economy of ?Just Us?: A Dispatch from the Cambrian Explosion in Payments," Theory, Culture and Society, v.35, 2018. doiID



Bill Maurer. "The Gift of Money: Demonetization, dematerialization, and money's pedigree," La revue du Mauss, v.52, 2018, p. 161.



Bill Maurer. "Re-risking in real time: On Possible Futures for Finance after the Blockchain," Behemoth: A journal on civilization, v.9, 2016, p. 82. doiID



Bill Maurer and Quinn DuPont. "Ledgers and law in the blockchain," King's Review, 2015.



Taylor C. Nelms, Bill Maurer, Lana Swartz, Scott Mainwaring. "Social Payments: Innovation, Trust, Bitcoin, and the Sharing Economy," Theory, Culture and Society, v.35, 2018, p. 13. doiID



Please report errors in award information by writing to: awardsearch@nsf.gov.