Digital Delegation Doctrine: Central Bank Digital Currencies And the Future of the Separation Of Powers
Civilization generally and the market economy in particular are premised on human cooperation, often between unwitting third parties separated by great distances.1 From the Roman law concept of the “mandatarius”2 to the common law doctrines of contract and agency,3 legal systems have sought to keep people to their word by invoking state power to enforce remedies or compel performance when some actors inevitably break their promises. Satoshi Nakamoto – the unidentified inventor of Bitcoin – did not want to rely on existing institutions built from the crooked timber of human nature nailed together with the traditional iron of law and state action.4 His technology strove to at least improve on our historical solutions to the trust problem. 5 While Satoshi’s innovation has received significant commercial interest, with venture capitalists willing to “hurl bricks of cash”6 at blockchain-based businesses, the trust and agency problems that Satoshi sought to solve are not only longstanding concerns of commercial and private law—but also of constitutional and public law.
