Technology is redefining financial services-including the way actors make and settle payments, raise capital, extend loans, and memorialize increasingly complex relationships. At the same time, new innovations-from cryptocurrencies to marketplace lending, robo-advising, and mobile payments-are creating novel regulatory issues for anti-money laundering requirements and cybersecurity. This Nutshell provides an overview of some the key developments reshaping finance-and the rules deployed to oversee them. Chris Brummer's Fintech Nutshell has been named by BookAuthority one of the 20 Best New Fintech Books to Read in 2020!

This book examines how cryptocurrencies based on blockchain technologies fit into existing general law categories of public and private law. The book takes the common law systems of the United Kingdom as the centre of its study but extends beyond the UK to show how cryptocurrencies would be accommodated in some Western European and East Asian legal systems outside the common law tradition. By investigating traditional conceptions of money in public law and private law the work examines the difficulties of fitting cryptocurrencies within those approaches and models. Fundamental questions regarding issues of ownership, transfer, conflict of laws, and taxation are addressed with a view to equipping the reader with the tools to answer common transactional questions about cryptocurrencies. The international contributor team uses the common law systems of the United Kingdom as a basis for the analysis, but also looks comparatively to other systems across the wider common law and civil law world to provide detailed examination of the legal problems encountered.