When Value Moves Like Data, Law Breaks

Legal systems were built for a world where value moved slowly and left traces.

Cash crosses borders in suitcases. Wire transfers route through correspondent banks. Property transfers require notaries and registries. Each step creates jurisdiction, creates paper trails, creates opportunities for intervention.

Crypto breaks this model. Value now moves at the speed of data, routing around friction the same way packets route around damage. A transaction that touches no US infrastructure, involves no US persons, and settles on a globally distributed network—where does it happen? Who regulates it?

The honest answer is: we don't know yet. Legal frameworks are struggling to adapt, caught between the impulse to assert jurisdiction over everything and the practical impossibility of enforcing rules on systems designed to resist enforcement.

This isn't just a crypto problem. It's a preview of broader tensions as more economic activity becomes natively digital. The solutions we develop here will shape how law relates to technology for decades.