 Thank you Will Is picking about a virtual currencies actually one of the first things that Let's come to my mind is that there actually there's no one single word to refer some people refer us as as virtual currencies Someone just referred us like to Bitcoin or the name of the specific currency But but in general we see that is a phenomenon that is going that is growing In the last in the last years And just something that is happening like the last Like few weeks we can see that we have like new actors like especially private actors that are starting to enter into these the development of these technology and this type of Currency I will give you the two examples if the person needs a case of Facebook So Facebook in the last weeks has announced that it pretends to develop their own Virtual currency or cryptocurrency that is to be used inside the social network So when we see that actually Facebook is entering into these into this scenario We see that there's actually some development on this area another thing that happened in the last in the last weeks I Don't know if you if you follow when the Samsung 10 was announced It was announced that this specific phone was gonna be launched with a wallet for a virtual For with occurrences and I think this wallet was using some currencies like Bitcoin Cosmocoin and another one. So again, we see how these These these companies are starting to enter into these Into these into the into this business and we can see that is actually a growing field But also very very unstable So another thing that you probably have here is that all these issues related with with occurrences are very Volatile markets because the prices actually are have been going down in the last in the last months on more than more than a year So in this context, I want to to to study these these these notion with relation of international international law So what what do I understand to try to get some some context to the debate? So I usually prefer the term virtual currency to this to refer to a Representation of value that is in power with the distributed ledger technology This technology is commonly referred as as blockchain. So blockchain is probably like the commercial name like everybody knows but the technology behind this is Distributed ledger technology now What is interesting to see is that why this technology actually is so innovative And that's probably the key part of analyzing any any type of Virtual currency scheme and the thing is that it brings a concept of decentralizing computing And I think that's probably the most innovative thing that is bringing with these with this concept so every time that I Speak about this and I think about a development in general I like to show you actually this this card here that is called the the content This car is exhibit on the Museo del automobile de Torino That is actually one of my kids favorite place as why I usually go a lot to this to this to this museum And every time I pass him by this museum this disc, you know this can get my attention especially because of the day We see that it is recorded that actually achieve about 100 kilometers per hour in this year at the end of the 19th century What is interesting is that by the end of the 20th century of the 19th century beginning of the 20th century We see that electric cars were actually the the main the main idea or one of the ideas that was going to supposedly take over the Auto industry what happened next after this is that we see that a troll gas actually dominated And what is more interesting? And I want to stress that to you is that we have to wait about 100 years until an Invention or a technology that was really innovative have actually some economic value and actually was inserted in in an industry so When we have something new One of the things is that this thing a new technology usually depends from other type of Factors or other type of circumstances like the same fact that there is other technologies and other social context That will make a technology that was now in the museum becomes some kind of relevant. I mean, I'm speaking about the idea not a precise Patent or something so I usually like to use these to illustrate how a New idea or a new technology can take actually some time to get some ground on on economic terms So making this this the short analogy Then this is a way that I have actually tried to to draw even for myself. What what is to what is distributed? technology so I Was looking in general and speaking with people from IT and every time I found that it was even difficult for someone like me that is not And especially on the field I would say that I am like an average person that maybe can look into social networks or turn off the phone and nothing else So then even I found that there was this these Barrier of actually knowing some things like like programming that is inserted with these What is unique about this is that for so many years? We have used to have the control of one computing that that's why the concept of decentralizing computing We have that a computing actually can be Taken in several Ledgers or blocks across across borders and an application can be executed across borders between several Computers of this is kind of like a very simplified way to to to understand how actually this technology operates And that actually bring us several several issues the people that actually defend and I'm very enthusiastic about this technology They tell you that because of these these applications that are power empowered with this technology are really hard to To crack or to hack why because it's almost impossible to Hack all the computers that are partying of the system and once a block is added to the to the system Then we see that it is very impossible to remove this information Which actually can be used for many many ways So this is like a simplified way. So then you will see that just to make it bigger If we have several states a blockchain will look actually look even bigger than this So you have all these blocks around the globe So that's why I found this this technology at least at least appealing or worth of attention for International law and the object of my of my research in the last in the last month Actually, it has been to to actually answer what doesn't mean for international law and more completely What doesn't mean for global governance out for the international economic law regimes? Are the current categories of international economic law? suitable to actually deal with some with a structure or a system of this Of these of these characteristics. So after yesterday is a Keynote of professor Kingsbury now I can refer these two maybe as a digital infrastructure So it's international economic law capable to deal with this type of digital infrastructure Why because there are several issues the first one is that it actually the execution of applications go beyond the authority of What a state and then we see that if there's no one a state that I can actually control Once a blockchain has or one of these systems have been Spread across across borders. So usually you will see two trends of thinking of authority in a world based on this really legit technology one is trying to Create some kind of central DLT systems where one a state would actually control or a group of the state would actually control that most of the blocks are under the authority of one states and then you will have another vision that is probably the most Liberally in a way that try to have this this figure where actually a state cannot control what is going on on the or cannot actually Influence too much. What is going on in this in this bro bro system? So in this in this case What doesn't mean exactly for international law and especially for international economic law usually we used to think about Categories, but especially an international economic law. We have all these Subregimes that they are used to specific economic transactions So another thing is that we have agreed that mutual currencies despite their names They are not actually accepted most of them as actually currency or legal tenders I think only Japan is the only country that have By law recognize some legal tender characteristics to the to the Bitcoin, but in general if this It is these currencies or these systems are not Understood as as a currency itself or as a legal tender then there is this question of how to interpret it under the current categories So for instance in the case of WTO law if these Systems cannot be subsumed into a currency Can maybe they can be subsumed into financial financial services or another category And in the case of investment law the question that rises is can any Digitalization of assets could be understood as an as a protected investment under the current Investment regime that as probably you know is this actually very fragmented network of bilateral and international investment agreements So then we see that the question can become more more complex depending of each case so It is in this regard there So in this regard from the point of view of of international investment law, we have this contradiction of Having to regulate a new a new trend with a very old treatise or with old treatise And not only with all treatise, but we can say with all law with all treatise will all concept and actually with all Cases so that's kind of like the contradiction that is generated with the image of these new technologies, especially Especially this one so in the case of investment law We see that most of the cases that are brought to a iteration and that you probably hear many many of these cases that have been controversial They are arising from treaties that were signed in the in the 90s So there's a note that is a statistics that says that about 90 percent of the current investment cases are based on cases that were brought by treaties or bilateral treaties that were signed and dropped there in the in the 90s So then we can see that even though that we have in all these discussions about CETA about these mega mega regionals most of the most of the complex that we are dealing having have these old Categories or old treatise from the 90s as the as a legal base So the first question is can we use these old concepts and old treatise to? regulate or to apply to economical transactions that are used in the decentralized System and the question actually it depends that's probably what one of the favorites answers for for a lawyer It depends of many many characteristics of the of the system But in general we can distinguish or I distinguish two ways of approach this the first one is to see how the investment on Empowering this technology can be subsumed as any other economic activity So as you see they usually there is this this this word that is called mining That is a word that is used to describe of how another block is added to the to the to the blockchain of the to the to the system And then for doing this actually you need to have a lot of you have to actually expand a lot of energy And a lot of services to actually provide this the service So certain states have make the regulation more or in general more Friendly to have this type of business on the territory where example is Mongolia another sample is the Belarusia So in that sense we can see that there are like kind of like the same incentives that we have for attractive investment in any other Feel of or economic transaction that is also being used to this specific to the specific feel So in that case what we can see is that we can subsume the activity of for instance mining into one of the categories of Foreign investment protected under bilateral treaties in that case We eventually can apply the same standards as if we are speaking about of any farm like a shrimp farm or mining operation on DLT technology So this is one one approach and we can actually go further and then we can see that like for instance We will have like maybe another type of investment arbitration cases that are arising from this But the question that I I post especially on these on these papers Can or do we need actually a specific additional concept for dealing with these on international? Economic law in general. So I think at least that there is the possibility to advance advance a concept of crypto investment That eventually could be used as an another category that it can be implemented into treaties Or even as an object of a specific regulation So this this this concept of of of crypto investment The first characteristic is that it should have to go Beyond the territoriality idea of actually what is a foreign investment. So in general we have seen that The the concepts in international law usually have changed during during time Usually it takes a lot of time to to move one concept across the years But in the case of investment we saw that if you take any book from the from the 19th century And before you have this notion of property So you don't have a notion of investment on on the 19th century you have this notion of protection of property of aliens or something similar So then we see that in in the case of Investment the word investment start to get inserted in a treatise after the After World War II especially so then we see that there was this evolution between Property to investment in about 100 years. So maybe we are reaching a point That we have to think in another categories To actually a update international law and that's the question that that I leave open And I hope that I will be able to to put it in a more consistent way in the paper that I'm Thank you