*New Technology on the Block** **Exploring the legal and regulatory implications of the blockchain** * By Michael Fitzgerald, October 10, 2016 n a global economy with increasingly far-flung workforces, companies often need to pay contract workers in other countries. They can do it the conventional way, involving processing an invoice and either cutting a check or collecting and managing direct-deposit data. Along the way, currency has to be converted, meaning a middleman is paid a percentage to make the exchange. Or companies can pay in bitcoin. The payment with the digital currency is immediate, and if the worker lives in a country such as India that has a bitcoin exchange, there are minimal fees to convert. Compared with conventional banking, it is simpler, cheaper and faster. By now, many people are familiar with bitcoin. What’s less well known is the currency’s technological underpinning, the blockchain, an emergent technology that could reshape financial and property markets, and the legal frameworks that support them. […] Continua qui: http://today.law.harvard.edu/feature/new-technology-block/