Blockchains are revolutionising not only payment traffic and FinTech, but also the organisation of companies. Stocking of data and programmes peer-to-peer, as well as the ability to make transactions without a trusted intermediary, opens the door to new commercial models and to decentralised company structures connected online.
Nevertheless, there are many legal problems to be resolved. Smart contracts have the advantage of executing automatically, without human intervention and with no possibility of error; but is that always advantageous, or would it be better to keep the option of human appreciation in some cases? Within a system that is also distributed, that is responsible in case of legal action? What about data protection, particularly if the data cannot be deleted or censored? Which models of intellectual property (open source? patents? A combination of these two approaches) will allow the players to defend their positions in this ever-changing environment?
In order to try to reply to these burning questions, the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce held a conference on 8th February 2018 in Zurich on blockchains. The following panellists presented their vision and answered the many questions from the public:
- Richard Olsen, CEO, Lykke Corp., Lykke Exchange, Zug;
- Karin Oberlin, Partner, Meyerlustenberger Lachenal Ltd., Zurich;
- Jürg Schär, Legal, Legislative & Regulatory Initiatives, UBS Business Solutions AG, Zurich
- Sergio Greco, Head Legal Payments & Digital Products, Executive Director, UBS AG, Zurich;
- Christophe Saam, CEO of P&TS
Christophe Saam’s talk concentrated on the technical aspects (what is a blockchain, how does it work, what is it used for?) as well as the possibilities for the protection of the technical aspects and the business methods that set this technology in place. The platform www.bernstein.io for the electronic dating of documents was also presented.
