The paradigm shift promised by blockchain-driven ecosystems is
heavily reliant on the irreversibility of on-chain transactions.
Immutability does not, however, negate the possibility of the
transaction being the result of fraud or a breach of the
contractual arrangement to which it purports to implement. It is
therefore only inevitable that we should be actively considering
whether the drastic judicial tools available to us in relation to
conventional assets, such as tracing and freezing orders, can be
deployed in relation to cryptoassets.
Any transaction over assets should result in an enforceable
change over the rights attaching to or deriving from the asset
concerned. Accordingly, cryptoasset transactions should be able to
economically and legally manifest in the real world. Cryptographic
assets have functional characteristics determined by the purpose
and use of the blockchain on which they exist. Freezing
cryptoassets presupposes they are assets in the legal
