Louisiana Law Review Volume 73 Number 4 Summer 2013 Article 9 8-1-2013 The Nature of the Form: Legal and Regulatory Issues Surrounding the Bitcoin Digital Currency System Joshua J. Doguet Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/lalrev Part of the Law Commons Repository Citation Joshua J. Doguet, The Nature of the Form: Legal and Regulatory Issues Surrounding the Bitcoin Digital Currency System, 73 La. L. Rev. (2013) Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/lalrev/vol73/iss4/9 This Comment is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Reviews and Journals at LSU Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Louisiana Law Review by an authorized editor of LSU Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The Nature of the Form: Legal and Regulatory Issues Surrounding the Bitcoin Digital Currency System We are at the beginning of a mighty struggle for control of the Internet—the web links everything and very soon it will mediate most human activity—because the Internet has fashioned a new and complicated environment for an age-old dilemma that pits the 1 demands of security with the desire for freedom. INTRODUCTION Technology experts have described Bitcoin as a “masterpiece of technology”—a work of genius on par with the Mona Lisa.2 Its beauty, though, is not outwardly apparent but instead lies at the heart of its design. Bitcoin is a digital currency system created to facilitate Internet commerce. It does this by using digital signatures and peer- to-peer technology to curtail the system’s need for trusted third parties, such as financial intermediaries and central banks.3 Bitcoin’s architecture gives it several advantages over alternative payment systems: transaction costs are lower, privacy is enhanced, and inflationary pressures within the system should be reduced.4 “Currency .