The supposed disruptive and transformational potential of blockchain technology has received widespread attention in the media, from legislators, and from academics across disciplines. While much of this attention has revolved around cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, many see the true promise of blockchain technology in its potential use for transactions in traditional assets, as well as for facilitating self-executing ‘smart contracts’, which replace vague and imprecise natural language with unambiguous computer code. This article presents a simple legal argument against the feasibility of a meaningful blockchain-based economic system. Blockchain-based systems are shown to be unsuitable for transactions in traditional assets, unless design choices are made which render the use of the technology pointless. The same argument is shown to apply to smart contracts. Legal and practical obstacles therefore mean that, outside its original realm of cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology is highly unlikely to transform economic interactions in the real world.

中文翻译：

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云加密土地

区块链技术所谓的颠覆性和变革性潜力已受到媒体、立法者和跨学科学者的广泛关注。虽然大部分注意力都集中在比特币等加密货币上，但许多人看到了区块链技术在传统资产交易以及促进自动执行的“智能合约”的潜在用途方面的真正前景，智能合约取代了模糊和不精确的自然具有明确计算机代码的语言。本文针对有意义的基于区块链的经济系统的可行性提出了一个简单的法律论据。事实证明，基于区块链的系统不适合传统资产的交易，除非做出的设计选择使该技术的使用变得毫无意义。同样的论点也适用于智能合约。因此，法律和实践障碍意味着，在其原始的加密货币领域之外，区块链技术极不可能改变现实世界中的经济互动。