Token as value rights & Token offerings and decentralized trading venues

This book was translated from German into English by means of artificial intelligence (machine translation). This academic paper deals with both civil (securities) law and regulatory (securities) law aspects. Thus, a summary of the property law is provided, which deals with the classification of tokens under Liechtenstein law. Furthermore, dematerialized securities, which have been known to the Liechtenstein legal system for almost 100 years, will be dis-cussed. The civil and corporate law focus is on Liechtenstein, while the Swiss corporate law and the general civil law of Austrian law are also taken into account. The supervisory part of the work is clearly in the focus of Union law, but also takes into account national specialties of Liechtenstein, Austria and Germany in addition to European legal acts. Thus, tokens and token-based business models are also examined in the light of European legal acts such as MiFIR, MiFID II, CRR, CRD IV, CSDR, EMIR, AIFMD, UCITSD, E-Money Directive II, PSD II, MAD/MAR, Prospectus Regulation, 5th AML Directive and other regulations, directives, as well as implementing regulations and delegated regulations. A special focus is placed on crypto exchanges and decentralized trading places (DEX). In addition, a focus will be placed on consumer law in terms of tokens and distance selling contracts, taking into account the Consumer Rights Directives. In this context, tokens as data or software and thus as digital content and consequently merchandise are also dealt with in more detail and the parallels to tokens as tokens with intrinsic value or virtual currencies in contrast to fiat money are shown. Furthermore, the author aims at explaining deposit business, e-money transactions and financial instruments as communicating vessels in contrast to virtual currencies. Although this is primarily a legal work, technical aspects of Distributed Ledger Technologies, such as the blockchain, smart contracts, agoric computing, self-sovereign identity, etc. - as far as this is necessary for the legal assessment - are also explained in more detail. The present discussion is to be understood as scientific work with practical relevance for advice in connection with blockchain based business models.

Dr. Josef Bergt is an expert on "New Economy Law" and as such is specialized in the fields of European and Liechtenstein Corporate, Banking and Financial Markets Law and has a comprehensive expertise in connection with the regulatory framework of capital markets, in particular regarding Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), as well as its variations such as Blockchain, Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAG), Hashgraph, Holochain, etc., including Token Sales and Offerings such as Initial Coin Offerings, Token Generating Events and Security Token Offerings (ICO/TGE/STO). Josef Bergt also has extensive knowledge on the formation and licensing of regulated financial institutions and financial intermediaries as well as with the preparation of securities prospectuses and the approval procedure by the relevant regulatory authorities. In addition, he has experience in litigation in civil and commercial law. He also has in-depth knowledge of data protection and intellectual property rights. With regards to academia Josef Bergt wrote his doctoral thesis dealing with Liechtenstein corporate law at the Private University of the Principality of Liechtenstein (UFL). Furthermore, Josef Bergt visited the LLM programme for Corporate, Foundation and Trust Law and the LLM programme for Banking and Finance at the University of Liechtenstein. Josef Bergt was part of the team providing policy recommendations for an EU Token Regulation Paper through thinkBLOCKtank asbl and in that regard also participated in the public consultation for an EU framework for markets in crypto-assets. Josef Bergt is also a supporter of the Liechtenstein blockchain scene and the Liechtenstein Blockchain Act (Token and Trusted Technologies Service Providers Act, TTTA; Gesetz über Token und vertrauenswürdige Technologie-Dienstleister, TVTG).