Law Commission consults on reforming Private International Law for Digital assets

The UK Law Commission has published a consultation on reforms to private international law necessitated by emerging technologies such as decentralised ledger technology (DLT). The Law Commissions state that their project has a particular focus on crypto-tokens, electronic bills of lading and electronic bills of exchange because these assets are prevalent in market practice while also posing novel theoretical challenges to the methods by which issues of private international law have traditionally been resolved. The consultation focuses primarily on wholly decentralised applications of DLT. Among other things, the Law Commission proposes:

1. To create a new free-standing information order to help claimants who have lost crypto-tokens through fraud or hacking, obtain information about the perpetrators or the whereabouts of their tokens without having to go through the existing gateways.
2. To consider how the existing jurisdictional gateways for property and tort can be applied in the context of crypto litigation.
3. To move away from using a single applicable law for wholly decentralised applications of DLT proving to be difficult and instead use an approach where courts consider using a range of factors to determine a fair outcome of the dispute, including the legitimate expectations of the parties.
4. To adopt a new approach to resolving a conflict of laws in cases where the degree of decentralisation is such that a different approach is required.
5. To modernise section 72 of the Bills of Exchange Act 1882 to bring it in line with modern approaches in private international law.

The deadline for comments is 8 September, with final recommendations expected to be published in early 2026. The Law Commission also published its third set of FAQs on issues which are not necessarily in need of reform but are nevertheless of concern to many stakeholders and the Law Commission considers could benefit from discussion and clarification. This third set focuses on property and permissioned DLT systems in private international law.

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