As a Kings Counsel, where do I see some of the potential legal challenges of the growing trend of tokenization?

Written by James Ramsden KC, co-founder of Astrea Group

With the current proliferation of tokenization across all business sectors, in the legal sphere we are seeing a variety of issues both in transactional market practice and in terms of disputes before the Courts.  Tokenization itself reflects the application of blockchain technology to a vast array of business scenarios (which is expanding as the technology takes hold). Current business use includes: cryptocurrency units; secure messaging payment transactions and the digitisation of assets (i.e. the digital recording of ownership and transfer rights in property, as opposed to paper format). 

One of the more recent tokenization trends is in relation to digital assets, as reflected in the Law Commission’s Report of June 2023.  So, the first part of this article will focus on some of the legal challenges of digitising assets by reference to a couple of examples. It is worth noting, however, that English property law, which governs ownership and transfer rights in assets, has evolved differ…