Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Richard Howlett, Solicitor at Selachii LLP London.
There can be no debate that technological development has never been as fast, as complex or as creative as it is today. The only problem is, as with all revolutions, when things are moving this fast one has to be very careful when it comes to separating innovation from irritation; as more new tech is made available we have to develop that sixth sense that will allow us to separate what will actually help us from what definitely won’t. S
Let’s take fintech (and I’d include Bitcoin and blockchain under that umbrella) as an example:
This is an area that commercial litigation firms are coming into contact with more and more. Given that we are currently in the midst of a digital revolution, the scale of which we have never seen before and will probably never see again, I think we all agree digital currency and digital transactions aren’t only progress but an inevitability.
Yes, there are – as there are with all new ideas – some legal and accounting wrinkles to iron out, but the initial take-up for digital currency would suggest it has some fairly muscular legs to grow into.
However, on the fringes of the fintech world we have seen some worrying developments. Buzzwords that long-term could prove to be as damaging as they are misleading in the short-term.
"Smart contracts" seem to be the buzzwords that are gaining increasing traction in the digital market. It is a sound enough idea, a contract that will rewrite itself according to commercial circumstances surrounding it by using a complex series of rules embedded in its coding.
The ideas behind it are equally as sound theoretically. Less input from the contracting parties means that smart contracts will come into being […]
