Matt Green
October 2024

Welcome to the In Early podcast, where host Matt Green dives into the world of digital assets and technology. In this episode, Matt speaks to Professor Sarah Green who has just finished a four year tenure as Law Commissioner for Common and Commercial Law. During that time Sarah’s law reform work included the Electronic Trade Documents Act 2023, Advice to the Government on Smart Contracts, updating the Arbitration Act 1996, scoping reforms to the law of Intermediated Securities and drafting guidance and a bill to ensure that English Law is well suited to accommodate Digital Assets. 

Key takeaways from the podcast

Matt questions:

  • The Law Commissions recommendation that issues should be dealt with in Courts, given important academic issues are then limited to whether a client has enough resources to litigate through to answer, when there is an opportunity to answer them now
  • What rivalrous means, given matt kimbers Pokémon references
  • Whether data as be property
  • As well as more about D2 Legal Technology and the problem it looks to solveThis episode features Professor Sarah Green who has just finished a four year tenure as Law Commissioner for Common and Commercial Law.

Matt and Sarah speak about the journey of crypto assets becoming “property” at common law and why that was important, to where we are now, with legislation looking to define “things” as property, using a negative definition proposed by the Judiciary:

  •  UK Jurisdiction Taskforce’s Legal Statement on Cryptoassets and Smart Contracts of 18 November 2019 which argued there should be no bar to cryptoassets being property at law, and for smart contracts to be legally binding: https://tinyurl.com/kmthub8z
  •  AA v Persons Unknown: Re Bitcoin, which relied on that paper, and in which the Judge confirmed “I consider that a cryptoasset such as Bitcoin is property” https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/…
  •  Law Commisison’s Digital Assets Call to Evidence April 2021, including some of Sarah’s favourite and notable feedback from the industry: Call for evidence: https://tinyurl.com/ft99r8ej Responses: Digital assets call for evidence responses
  •  Next was the Digital Assets Consultation Paper of 28 July 2022, which proposed a third category of property called a Data Object, with Sarah considering the inclusion and status of data, even considering absurd Matrix-esque environments where everything is data: https://tinyurl.com/5n6u8zs9
  •  The Law Commission’s Digital Assets Final Report of 28 June 2023, which removed the need for this new property definition to include “composed of data” and changes the definition to recognise property where “merely by reason of the fact it is neither a thing in action nor a thing in possession”: https://tinyurl.com/379up4ec
  •  finally the Supplemental Report and Draft Bill (now the Propert (Digital Assets etc.) Bill) continues that a “thing” can be property, with the words “digital” and “electronic” as references: https://cloud-platform-e218f50a481296…