Bitcoin: le sfide dell'autoregolazione

This paper considers the phenomenon of bitcoins, the best known cryptocurrency, commonly pre-sented as a means of self regulation, because its circulation does not require the intermediation of central authorities, thanks to the use of the blockchain system. However, due to the enormous costs, concretely the circulation of bitcoins occur off chain, through platforms implemented by relatively few private companies. This means that a regulation does exist, but it is left to the private initiative. Moving from this statement, the paper briefly considers the recent EU regulatory initiative lauched in September 2020, putting in evidence its main contents and also its limits. In particular, the ‘a-territorial’ character of bitcoins questions the efficacy of the attempt to encapsulate their regulation within territorial ambits. The challenge for jurists (legislators, academics, judges) is to catch the new ‘global’ perspective of phenomena like bitcoins requiring to pass across the national legal orders in order to understand (and regulate) them.