Head of Blockchain & Digital Assets Chua Tju Liang quoted in BT on current spate of cryptocurrency cases
13 Apr 2023
Head of Blockchain & Digital Assets Chua Tju Liang was quoted in the Business Times (BT) discussing the current spate of cryptocurrency cases before the courts and the new novel questions or unchartered territory that may surface.
The article highlighted novel cases such as Janesh s/o Rajkumar v Unknown Person, where the High Court granted an injunction to freeze a non-fungible token (NFT) of the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club variety and was ruled that NFTs are a form of property; and Quoine Pte Ltd v B2C2 Ltd, where Quoine, a cryptocurrency exchange was found to be in breach of contract over the reversals of certain trades by market maker B2C2. As more insolvencies and disputes come before the courts, new novel questions are expected to surface.
Tju Liang was quoted saying, “One critical set of questions that is at the frontier of law, is how the actions of decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) interact with the legal environment. Some DAOs exist solely in the digital space, without any legal entity or form, and it is often difficult to pinpoint any person who controls it.”
“As our legal system is premised on rights and responsibilities of specific and identifiable legal persons, we will have to evolve new principles to address how our laws can be applied to DAOs, and to persons participating in DAOs”, Tju Liang highlighted.
“Often many of these technical advances challenge assumptions that we have made as a society, on which many of our legal rules are designed. And yet our fundamental legal principles remain intact – once the change in the technical advances are well understood, the court can then apply the underlying legal principle in a different way to accommodate these changes.”
In a separate BT article, Tju Liang, together with a few other law experts, were invited to share their tips on the ways to prepare themselves and learn about the technicalities of the cryptocurrency space. Tju Liang, who is passionate about technology, finds it extremely interesting to follow the technical advances in blockchain technology. Following the right accounts on Twitter to stay up to date on the latest developments in the cryptocurrency space has formed a key part of his professional career.
You may read both reports on p.1 and 2 of BT (10 Apr 2023). The articles, “Crypto hearings in Singapore throw up quirks, legal novelties” and “Twitter and 100-year-old cases are a crypto lawyer’s best friends” can also be accessed here and here.