מטבעות קריפטוגרפיים: אתגרים מושגיים, משפטיים ורגולטיביים

Cryptocurrencies have presented the stale field of payment systems with considerable conceptual, legal and regulatory challenges since their inception in 2009.Reconstructing “first principles” of value-transfer and smart contracts, this article offers a conceptual and legal framework for understanding and interpreting cryptocurrencies, their potential in enhancing and broadening access to payment for disenfranchised populations, while analyzing categories of associated risks: market,financial, cyber, and regulatory. Building on a body of recent scholarship and use cases,the article proceeds of two intersecting levels: the contribution of cryptocurrencies to the theory of money and value transfer, and the regulative lessons that these theoretical insights generate. Instead of “diagnostic” approaches to cryptocurrencies, the article proposes to treat different kinds of transfer categories as contextual clusters of propertization links among various stakeholders, offering a relational-oriented theory of cryptocurrencies. Rather than asking “how are cryptocurrencies money?” from a diagnostic perspective that centers on regulation, the question focuses on “who is this money for?” from social, political and financial perspectives .This article deals exclusively with value transfer (i.e., payment) and not with value accruing (i.e. investment and/or speculation), which it regards as a bastardization of the original purpose of creating stable, cheap, safe and universally accessible payment mechanisms – a vision that is still a long way ahead. It surveys and points to innovative solutions offered for traditional problems of pseudonymity, value fluctuation and stability, accessibility and value merger .The article calls for a comprehensive framework for regulating cryptocurrencies-as-payment and their interface with traditional banking, instead of the prevalent fragmented and piecemeal approach exhibited by both regulators (who sometimes contradict each other and stifle useful innovation) and hesitant courts, which are cornered into ad-hoc decisions that leave stakeholders in regulatory fog.