Faculty Books
Digital Commercial Law: Private Law in the Age of Tokens, Platforms, and Automation
Files
ORCID (Links to author’s additional scholarship at ORCID.org)
Christopher K. Odinet: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6264-638X
Andrea Tosato: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2607-2702
Description
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.
ISBN
9780197758625
Publication Date
2026
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Keywords
digital assets, blockchain, cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, stablecoins, NFTs, private law, commercial law, tokenized real estate, debt tokens, bankruptcy
Disciplines
Banking and Finance Law | Commercial Law | Law | Property Law and Real Estate | Science and Technology Law | Secured Transactions
Recommended Citation
Christopher K. Odinet & Andrea Tosato, Digital Commercial Law: Private Law in the Age of Tokens, Platforms, and Automation (Oxford Univ. Press 2026).
