Regulatory Ramblings: Episode 49 - Digital Currencies and Public Law with Andrew Mazen Dahdal

Regulatory Ramblings: Episode 49 – Digital Currencies and Public Law with Andrew Mazen Dahdal

July 19, 2024

Dr. Andrew Mazen Dahdal is an associate professor at the College of Law at Qatar University in Doha. He received his Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales, where he received an Outstanding Achievement award in 2014 for his dissertation on the necessity of historical analysis in constitutional interpretation.

Andrew has also taught constitutional and commercial law in Australia and Europe full-time as an adjunct. Writing on law, technology, and global legal frameworks, Andrew is now focused on exploring the intersections between private and public law, specifically the technocratic connections between constitutional and commercial legal frameworks.

This episode of Regulatory Ramblings discusses his upcoming book, Digital Currencies and Public Law: History, Constitutionalism, and the Revolutionary Nature of Money. In it, he advocates for deeper engagement by public lawyers in digital currency developments that threaten dramatic changes in the relationship between individuals and government authorities.

As Andrew shares with our host, Ajay Shamdasani, no modern issue is more widely acknowledged and less understood than that of digital currencies. However, constitutional scholars’ voices must be included in the prevailing digital money conversation. For example, private law scholars grapple with the legal questions raised by digital currency models in property and contract. Alternatively, public law scholars have yet to appreciate the moment’s significance.

Andrew argues that the challenge of understanding the technical dimensions of digital money innovations has obscured the potential constitutional revolution that digital currencies represent. His book starts with the premise that ‘money’ is best considered a constitutional phenomenon. When seen in that light, it becomes clear that changes like money represent changes in political and constitutional arrangements.

The discussion elaborates on how and why that is so by examining historical episodes where the nature of money was linked to renewed constitutional settlements. The book distills a core set of principles linking aspects of monetary innovation, such as technical control of the money supply, to constitutional positions, such as executive fiscal accountability. From such principles, a conceptual framework is proposed that translates the specific attributes of digital currency proposals into the language of constitutional dynamics.

Andrew also recounts what it was about digital currencies that initially piqued his curiosity as a constitutional scholar and, ultimately, what compelled him to write the book. He also shares his thoughts on what he feels the book adds to an already crowded marketplace on the subject matter.

He concludes that cryptocurrencies and virtual assets herald an opportunity for wholesale constitutional reform the world has yet to see. Andrew notes that indeed, when it arrived on the scene, and its most ardent advocates were anti-statists, anarcho-libertarians—and even to some extent today—the rise of Bitcoin and digital assets writ large can be seen as a political movement in search of an ideology.

Looking back on the development of money, Andrew said every fiat currency has been a form of cash, albeit stripped of its intrinsic value. Moving forward, he said, there was no way to have a robust conversation about money and digital change without interrogating competing monetary forms.

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