Law 797:  Blockchain for Lawyers

This course provides a basic understanding of blockchain technology. It is intended to be a technical foundation for studying the current and emerging laws applicable to blockchain systems. Students will learn how essential blockchain systems work, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, altcoins, smart contracts and NFTs, decentralized autonomous organizations, and decentralized finance systems. We will relate technical issues to legal issues to ensure students are familiar with the key areas of law that govern blockchain systems and virtual assets. Those areas will include securities and commodities, asset tokenization, privacy, and intellectual property. This is a pass/fail course. 

Sequence and Prerequisites:  A basic understanding of Bitcoin functionality is recommended, but not required.   

Evaluation: This is a pass/fail course. Students are expected to attend classes and engage in class participation. Students are assigned reading materials and required to prepare a short paper.