Jurisprudence and New Technologies

Each generation of technology puts new questions to jurisprudence, questions for which the classical texts hold no ready answer. The jurist's task in such cases is not to find a settled ruling but to apply general principles to a novel subject.

Identifying the subject comes first

Before one can speak about the ruling on a cryptocurrency, one has to establish what a cryptocurrency is: whether it is property, and if so, of what kind.

Carelessness at this first step explains much of the divergence among contemporary opinions.