Digital Assets: Chapter 8 of the Law of Personal Property (3rd edition), ed Bridge, Gullifer, Low and McMeel. Published Sweet and Maxwell, ISBN (print) 978-0-414-09815-2, 1,354 pages. In his recent book, Reality+, the philosopher David Chalmers argues that we are unable to know if we are all living in a simulated virtual universe: virtual realities are, he claims, genuine realities. Ever since 2009 when Satoshi Nakamoto (who may or may not be a real person) unleashed Bitcoin on what we assume is ‘the world’, lawyers have been wondering how to tell the difference between real and virtual money, between real assets and virtual assets; the answer remains as elusive as Chalmers’ question. We are forced back to first principles: What is property? What is money? Can digital assets (if they are assets) be the subject of a trust? What does it mean to ‘own’ something? …
€
Gilead Cooper, Personalty+, Trusts and Trustees, volume 28, issue 5, June 2022, pages 447-450, https://doi.org/10.1093/tandt/ttac029. Published 2 May.
First posted 2022-06-27 10:45:46
Leave a Reply