The financial systems are being reshaped by the convergence of emerging technologies such as AI, Internet of Things (IoTs), blockchain, and decentralised finance (DeFi). This nexus unlocks the potential for automated smart contracts and peer-to-peer transactions. It also enables secure, efficient, and transparent financial services that fundamentally alter traditional financial systems. For example, blockchain forms the basis of DeFi to facilitate the creation of tokenised assets and digital currencies, which empowers users to engage in financial transactions without relying on intermediaries of the traditional financial system – thus, enhancing transparency and reducing transaction costs. Despite these benefits, there are significant challenges associated with the dual use of these technologies along with DeFi, including issues concerning scalability, security, regulatory compliance, and interoperability with the traditional financial architecture. There are potential risks, such as facilitation of illicit activities such as fraud, money laundering, and cyber extortion through anonymous platforms provided by DeFi. Thus, the dual use of these technologies and DeFi assets presents a new dawn of financial innovation and empowerment, whilst there are evolving challenges to address. This chapter presents an overview of the dual use landscape of these technologies and explores measures that can effectively navigate dynamic complexities to best exploit transformative benefits of this emerging ecosystem.

In an era where two-fifths of the global population is engaged in gaming, this industry’s technological and economic evolution is of paramount importance, promising continued growth. Beyond mere entertainment, gaming has become a primary medium for social interaction, enriched by technologies like virtual, augmented, and extended reality. Gaming has increasingly become intertwined with the financial market as game developers shift their focus from gameplay enjoyment to monetization of in-game assets and some players prioritize the potential for livelihood in gaming. This transformation has been accelerated by the integration of blockchain, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which provide users with more control over their in-game assets and enable external trading of such assets in the secondary market. This chapter delves into this integration, examines its impact on the gaming industry, and provides a high-level overview of key related legal and ethical issues that warrant further exploration.

This chapter analyses the meaning, legal implications, and policy consequences of Decentralised Finance (‘DeFi’). Decentralisation has the potential to undermine traditional forms of accountability and erode the effectiveness of traditional financial regulation and enforcement. At the same time, where parts of financial services are decentralised, there will be a reconcentration in a different (but possibly less regulated, less visible, and less transparent) part of the financial services chain. DeFi regulation could and should focus on this reconcentrated portion to ensure effective oversight and risk control. In fact, DeFi requires regulation in order to achieve its core objective of decentralisation. Furthermore, DeFi may further the idea of ‘embedded regulation’– building regulatory approaches into the design of decentralised infrastructure, potentially decentralising both finance and its regulation in the ultimate expression of RegTech.

This contribution discusses some critical aspects of the upcoming Markets in Crypto-assets (MiCA) Regulation. There is already extensive and comprehensive literature on the MiCA proposal, and the scope of these brief notes is to consider some – necessarily not all – of the issues that MiCA (as it stands in the original proposal) raises, and that might be considered in the next steps of the legislative process. In particular, we discuss the relationship between MiCA and MiFID-Prospectus rules, the issues raised by DeFI, tokenisation of assets, and some general commercial and civil law aspects.