Legal Digital Assets Research – LEGDIGITAS

The development of distributed registry technologies, the most well-known of which use the Blockchain protocol, has generated new “instruments” that have yet to be properly classified or brought under a legal framework. This research project focuses on these instruments, which are known by various names (tokens, crypto-assets, digital assets...).
Legislative initiatives are proliferating in an effort to regulate it without hindering it, but while France may have appeared to be a forerunner with the adoption of its PACTE law, it does not currently have a sufficiently solid and fully developed body of legal research to enable it to influence international discussions initiated by UNIDROIT and the Hague Conference. The diversification of these crypto-assets (security tokens, utility tokens, stable coins, NFTs...) raises questions about the ability of our legal categories to absorb these new assets. the United States has already made legislative changes to account for controllable electronic records and the United Kingdom is now debating a bill that would enshrine a new category of legal assets: digital objects. The aim of the work, which will be carried out by a multidisciplinary group of academics established for a 24-month period, will be to rapidly cultivate a mature understanding and legal analysis of the phenomenon, with a view to informing the public authorities about the adjustments needed in French positive law in the context of ensuring the orderly integration of European legislation, to influence international negotiations so as to promote an analysis of continental law more deferential to the European legal model, and to enriching research and university teaching on the legal aspects of this new digital economy.