Blockchain And Law With A Focus On Data Protection And Anti-Money Laundering

Co-authored by Boris Inderbitzin, Leandro Lepori and Raj Unny

Distributed ledger technology (DLT) has great potential and is increasingly being used in different industries. Many legal challenges in connection with DLT do not differ from already known ones in the field of information and communication technology (ICT). Some other challenges, though, are inherent to the design of certain DLTs and raise specific legal questions. The authors aim to show in an extremely succinct overview how DLT can be embedded into the existing legal framework for data protection and anti-money laundering (AML), two concepts of high relevance for banks.

Introduction: DLT and Blockchain

DLT can be categorised into: (1) permissioned, private shared ledger (technology is owned, participants are limited and known, i.e. BankChain); (2) permissioned, public shared ledger (technology is owned, validation through known and trusted validators, everybody can participate, i.e. Ripple); (3)