When Bitcoin made its appearance in 2009, it has been welcomed as an Internetprodigy and condemned as the ideal tool for committing crimes on the net. Bitcoin is only the topof an iceberg working only through the technology behind, named blockchain, which can beused for many applications, being employed to generate the so-called smart contracts, to fosterpayments, to implement new financial instruments, to collect taxes, to manage IP rights, and tofavor the democratic participation processes of governance and organizational structures. A lotof industries have yet to gather their potentials and the techniques in which blockchain can beutilized to make procedures more efficient or to advance new services. This book underlines theneed for the law to rule on it: potentiality and novelty are well received but this technology callsfor new guidelines and methodologies to legal thinking. This volume provides an outlook for theblockchain technology, in a multidisciplinary perspective, and analyzes how the scholars areworking out solutions to tackle these new legal issues. -- Provided by publisher