Digital Commercial Law: Private Law in the Age of Tokens, Platforms, and Automation

From Bitcoin and stablecoins to NFTs, digital assets recorded on blockchain networks have reshaped the commercial landscape. Yet despite this transformation, their legal treatment has been dangerously skewed. While regulators and scholars have fixated on financial oversight, a crucial legal dimension has been neglected: private law. Digital Commercial Law exposes two fundamental imbalances plaguing the digital asset ecosystem. First, the legal community's overwhelming emphasis on financial regulation has eclipsed the private law foundations governing ownership, transfer, custody, and collateralization. Second, when private law issues are considered, contractual arrangements are treated as all-controlling while property, bailment, secured transactions, and bankruptcy concepts are disregarded. Through doctrinal analysis and case studies, Odinet and Tosato illuminate how this disequilibrium leads to market dysfunction and systemic risk, while demonstrating how a balanced approach can restore stability. Written by leading authorities on digital asset law, this groundbreaking book directly addresses these critical flaws by making a compelling case for restoring private law, in all its facets, to its central role in the digital economy.